general gaming

[wind stump]

And hey, two indies in the running for GoTY

[river veldt]

yeah i dont get Witcher 3 hype tbh

[young creek]

No botw sold 10 times more than ss

[slim thorn]

I think that's a pretty normal reaction these days

[young creek]

3 mil vs 33

[slim thorn]

Ixrec — 11/9/25, 15:36
[Witcher 3] came out when that style of open world was still fresh and interesting, but these days I typically see it trotted out as one of the few non-Ubisoft examples of why people have Ubisoft open world fatigue

you could say your disinterest in W3 is similar to when someone else is uninterested in HL1/2 because "they've seen it all done before in other games"

[river veldt]

yeah but HL1 and 2 are awesome and Witcher 3 is stupid /j

im just goofin

[slim thorn]

if anything I would've picked E33 as the most likely to get an "I've never heard of that" reaction, since KCD2 made noise with all the usual big open world players, had the word of mouth buildup from the first game, while E33 actually came out of nowhere

(we in this channel have been talking about E33 way more recently, but I believe we were just as chatty about KCD2 back when it dropped)

[young creek]

i got another example

baldurs gate 3

no one knew it had a 1 or 2

[unreal idol]

I've heard way more about 33

[young creek]

Mario Bros 3

alright that one was fake

[slim thorn]

PK: did you know about baldur's gate 1 and 2?

[river veldt]

i still wanna play E33

[unreal idol]

Only because Baldurs Gate 3 exists

I'm also presuming there are not 32 previous Es

[slim thorn]

nope

[river veldt]

it's like mario 64

there's paintings

[hushed onyx]

Excepting Death Stranding and Donkey Kong, which I don't know enough about to have an opinion, those are all very strong candidates from what I've heard (I've played precisely none of them). Whoever loses is in very much a good game situation where, you know, it's fair to lose to such strong competition. It's not like one of those Academy Awards where some movie wins Best Picture while a clearly better candidate loses...

[young creek]

there arent 76 fallout games either

fun fact

[hushed onyx]

🫠

[slim thorn]

yeah this happens a lot with any annual awards show; the most award-worthy stuff isn't evenly spread across every year

[unreal idol]

I dont know what a melting face means

[hushed onyx]

I got into RPGs after Baldur's Gate came out, but not long after...the OG and II are still on my eventual play list...

[hushed onyx]

I was in the middle of explaining. Basically, you made me feel old because these were like, the games right before I started playing games in that genre, from BioWare even.

[static bluff]

yeah they're calling it the first good Mario 64-like.

[hushed onyx]

(The first RPGs I played were like Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, and other BioWare RPGs)

[unreal idol]

I see

[river veldt]

ever heard of a little game called Banjo Kazooie

[young creek]

ever heard of a little game called mario galaxy 2

[static bluff]

Mario Galaxy 2 has zero paintings bro

[young creek]

it does

[river veldt]

bro Mario Galaxy 2 has a Mario 64 level in it

[young creek]

seeing throwback galaxy was the greatest moment of my childhood....

[slim thorn]

Yeah, not knowing about BG1&2 is kinda like having never heard of Banjo Kazooie. They're old enough that if you weren't around, or were playing other genres, it's entirely reasonable to not know, but they're also genre-defining favorites for many who did play them.

I was playing other genres at the time. I only became personally aware of BioWare when they started their console RPG era with KotOR.

[unreal idol]

To me that just makes me go "who the fuck hasn't heard of banjo-kazooie" lol

[slim thorn]

exactly

like how I can probably weird out some people by saying I've never played a (mainline) Pokemon game

[unreal idol]

jazz music stops

[slim thorn]

(as funny as that is to say when I'm literally watching a youtube video about competitive Pokemon)

[static bluff]

okay I actually forgot about that I gotta give it to ya, that was a good response

Delayed plus 2

[slim thorn]

oh, and I never played a Sonic game

[static bluff]

ixrec cannot comment on games anymore

[slim thorn]

see there's always someone

[static bluff]

gotta go fast

[slim thorn]

likewise, there's probably someone in this conversation who never played a Metroid or a Castlevnia

[unreal idol]

I've only played a small number of Sonic games

[unreal idol]

I've played both of those! Literally

[young creek]

me ive never played castlevania

[hushed onyx]

I have not! I played part of Metroid Prime 2 but that's it.

[mossy flume]

Good to see Clair Obscur nominated for dang near every single category in the Game Awards.

[young creek]

every metroid game ive tried sucked

[hushed onyx]

I've always been a PC guy so anything that's not on PC I almost certainly have not played.

[slim thorn]

amusingly, Metroid is by far the more consistently good franchise compared to Castlevania

[hushed onyx]

The only real exceptions to this are Halo 2-Reach and Tales of Symphonia, in both cases because I played co-op with a sibling.

[unreal idol]

I think I'm the only person who doesn't like super metroid

[visual hill]

I have to learn the basics in a few weeks, I go to a LAN where one of the games we'll play is Pokémon Showdown

I will get my ass handed over at this particular game, but I need to do it with style

[river veldt]

you should try Castlevania 1 or 4 those are the best ones

[young creek]

my backlog is too long

i havent played deltarune bro

or pokemon za

[river veldt]

bro Castlevania 1 takes like 2 hours to beat

[young creek]

or the new zelda game

featuring korokman

[slim thorn]

So the funny thing there is, IMO every 2D Metroid has been better than the last, which leaves the earliest ones as hard to recommend these days. I thought Super was good but I can't really recommend it over Zero Mission, Fusion, Dread, etc, especially to a new player. My impression is that the fans of specifically Super Metroid are mostly the kind of gamer that's heavily motivated by nostalgia. So maybe that's why you feel like the odd one out there?

[young creek]

instead im playing perma death silksong and dying to a lady made of branches

[river veldt]

it's kind of crazy how Echoes of Wisdom came out only a little over a year after TotK

[young creek]

ive played that one I mean the new hyrule warriors

[unreal idol]

Maybe. I had fun playing Metroid on NES

Super Metroid was just... boring and not engaging

[river veldt]

oooooh

[slim thorn]

meanwhile, the NES original is one of the few Metroids I never finished

(and I mean few, I think it's literally just that one plus I never tried Federation Force at all? all the other Metroids I've played to completion at least once, even 2 emulated and Pinball and Hunters)

[wind stump]

different dev team, i assume

(the one that did the Link's Awakening remake, going by style)

[mossy flume]

Correct

[river veldt]

oh yeah it was Grezzo

[slim thorn]

makes sense, I got the impression Zelda's one of those franchises where they have big and small games, and the smaller entries try to reuse a lot of what they did in previous games (not literal asset reuse but engines, mechanics, style, etc)

[river veldt]

they should nominate Battlefield 6 for goty

[mossy flume]

A few Zelda games do asset reuse. Majora’s Mask, Echoes of Wisdom, Spirit Tracks

[slim thorn]

fair

[random steppe]

Honestly, very fair list

[mossy flume]

They do try to avoid it overall, though

[river veldt]

Spirit Tracks was my first Zelda game

[mossy flume]

TotK, sorta

[slim thorn]

if I ever play another (old) Zelda it will probably be Majora's Mask, possibly after an OoT replay for full context

[river veldt]

it's a wonder that Zelda is one of my favorite game series

[mossy flume]

I’m so sorry

[random steppe]

People kept repeating that DK Bananza is actually amazing, my absolute disinterest for everything Nintendo kept me from finding out if they were serious or ironic about it until now, good to know.

[slim thorn]

I never played EoW because what I saw of it had me convinced I'd just mindlessly spawn tables everywhere and not enjoy it very much, especially after being kinda overstuffed on the BotW/TotK formula

[mossy flume]

Yeah, Bananza has been nominated for a few awards

[slim thorn]

I'm still not sure myself lol, I haven't heard anything about Bananza besides vague hype

[river veldt]

hey it was kind of cool having Zelda be your companion for the whole game

[mossy flume]

It really is great. Just not my vibe

[river veldt]

and uhhhhh

[slim thorn]

yeah it also seems like not my vibe

[river veldt]

idk trains are cool

i wanna play Bananza so bad

[mossy flume]

But nevertheless it’s an achievement, I’ll grant

[river veldt]

same development team as Odyssey

[random steppe]

I heard a lot of praise for it

[mossy flume]

https://www.polygon.com/game-awards-2025-nominees-list-game-of-the-year/

[mossy flume]

Yeah and it shows

[slim thorn]

ok I wasn't imagining that vibe

then yeah I'm just not in the mood for another of those right now

[random steppe]

Holy shit the best performance section

[mossy flume]

Bananza was nominated for GOTY

Yeah haha

Clair Obscur is EVERYWHERE

[random steppe]

Is E33 in literally every category it can arguably be included in? This is hilarious

[mossy flume]

Yes it is

If it could potentially qualify, it’s in it

[river veldt]

Mario Kart World might be an easy shoe in for best family game, thought Sonic Racing Crossworlds might win it too

[slim thorn]

what does "Games for Impact" mean?

[river veldt]

hoping Doom Dark Ages wins best action

[mossy flume]

Social messaging

[random steppe]

TBH almost mad that they didn't put Renoir in best performance, but 4 out of 6 spots may have been too much

[river veldt]

ive been watching this event for the past like, 5 years and i still dont know

[mossy flume]

So, pro LGBTQ stuff, or fascinating game developer stories

[slim thorn]

yeah I've never heard of any of those 5

oh hey Dispatch is nominated

[mossy flume]

Usually it’s for games that are heavy with progressive messages

But it’s pretty vague

[random steppe]

Yeah it's games with good social utility to them, and a unique approach because of it

[quiet swift]

I didn't really see a lot of talk about death stranding 2, so it feels a bit weird that it's on there except for Geoff pretty much being in love with Kojima

[slim thorn]

Best Indie I know 4/6, Debut Indie I know 3/5

[mossy flume]

Lego Voyagers is really cool, btw

Glad to see it nominated

[slim thorn]

I heard quite a bit about DS2 when it came out, but it does feel like there wasn't "buzz" per se, I assume because it's a sequel to an already widely played game so everyone already knows if they want it or not

[random steppe]

I know Lost Records, it's the next life is strange devs game

[mossy flume]

Split Fiction was great too

[river veldt]

i really hope Baldur's Gate 3 wins best community support, them optimizing the game for Steam Deck was amazing

[slim thorn]

I've heard positivity about Split Fiction but like It Takes Two have no one to do the multiplayer thing with so it was never on my todo list

[mossy flume]

I’ve never heard of “Peak” for the multiplayer category

[slim thorn]

oh I'm always seeing Peak go by in the stuff youtubers play for clicks pile

[random steppe]

South of midnight is the one based on Southern folklore

[slim thorn]

I have no idea what it's actually about

[mossy flume]

And why is Elden Ring in the multiplayer category? I thought it was single player?

[slim thorn]

Nightreign is multiplayer

[river veldt]

hoping Charlie wins this one

[mossy flume]

I never know who any of those people are

Or the esports category

[slim thorn]

I've heard of 1 but don't watch any

[random steppe]

He was good as 5ft tall bat

[river veldt]

i only know Critical, but have heard of Kai Cenat

[random steppe]

(he plays Sonar in Dispatch)

[mossy flume]

Ooooo

[river veldt]

this one will be tough

[mossy flume]

I like the bat guy 🦇

[gaunt marten]

You have heard of 1 today

[river veldt]

all of these look good

[wind stump]

nah we stanning Sakura Miko

[unreal idol]

Isn't Sakura Miko a vtuber

[wind stump]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_2HnzozHRA

[random steppe]

He is pretty good, usually youtuber turned voice actors ends up pretty badly, espeicially when they play pretty prominent roles

[mossy flume]

Prime 4

[unreal idol]

Thats the only name I know on that list lol

[wind stump]

NO U
FAQ U

[mossy flume]

GTA6, I guess? I’m actually not terribly excited for any of those. I’m looking forward to 007, though

[river veldt]

im excited for RE9 even though it's probably gonna be one of those games i only watch a playthrough of

[mossy flume]

I want to get into the Witcher games, but I’m so far behind and they’re huge games

[slim thorn]

yeah, I've never paid much attention to these award things, because so much of it is about games I just don't care about, and the ones I do care about I've already played by the time the awards happen so why would I care which one this specific show declared a winner

[gaunt marten]

You can start with 3 and you'll be fine

[unreal idol]

they are also likely rigged

[river veldt]

im just there for the announcements

[slim thorn]

it's not like when I feel like watching a serious artsy movie and I can just check the Oscar nominees for suggestions

[mossy flume]

I’m usually interested in the categories of the Game Awards

There are a few I couldn’t care less about (influencers and esports teams for example) but usually I’m pretty excited to see the rest of it

And it’s also the new E3, so…

[mossy flume]

Good to know

[slim thorn]

I also didn't watch E3 coverage

[mossy flume]

Ix is not a real gamer /s

[unreal idol]

I fell off of E3 hard sometime in the mid or late 00s

[mossy flume]

Heh, I still watch all the big announcement shows

[river veldt]

i miss E3 it was so fun

[river veldt]

same

[mossy flume]

Usually live

[slim thorn]

when I first got "serious" about video games I did try reading a lot of magazine previews and watch E3 presentations and all that stuff you're supposed to do, but the correlation between what was being shown and what I actually got to play later that year was... very weak

like, so weak that it was literally a waste of time, I should just be playing other games instead lol

[mossy flume]

I never catch Nintendo live because they do theirs at like 5 AM where I am T_T

And I have like… jobs

[quiet swift]

How dare you

[slim thorn]

theoretically I get the appeal for someone who plays primarily the AAA blockbuster games and thus more than 1% of the announcements are relevant to them

but that hasn't been me for decades

[quiet swift]

Oh, titanic (1997). The year makes more sense

I was gonna say, that's rather ominous sounding

[slim thorn]

I was half expecting someone to need to explain that Titanic was a movie that won a lot of awards

[static bluff]

Titanic 2077 is gonna go wild when they release that..

[quiet swift]

I was going to need that for about .5 seconds

[river veldt]

my little brother had a phase where he was absolutely obsessed with the Titanic

[slim thorn]

I also had that phase

[river veldt]

he watched the movie like every day lol

[mossy flume]

Yeah, they’re like 70% relevant to me

[static bluff]

I never saw it because I heard it was rated M for nudity

[random steppe]

I'm not against them throwing a bone to some other games as long as E33 takes away best music, best performance (ideally Gustave of Maelle) and GOTY

[static bluff]

(as in I wasn't allowed to see it and then never took the time watched it on my own)

[random steppe]

A sweep would be fun but there are other deserving games this year that I'd like to see recognised

[slim thorn]

come to think of it, they were probably more relevant to me before AAAs shifted to that multiplayer-first mindset after CoD:MW

[mossy flume]

And it’s also just a good way for me to keep my finger on the pulse of the industry

[unreal idol]

Titanic is a great action film bogged down by a weak romance plot

[river veldt]

it's a really great movie

i like the romance

[mossy flume]

Yeahhhhhh…. we need more single player focused games, and not half-assed ones. We need more Mass Effects.

[static bluff]

It's got that guy from the wolf of wallstreet in it, right?

[river veldt]

yeah !

[static bluff]

Nice

[slim thorn]

tbf it was probably always inevitable that I'd drift away from AAAs once the PC indie boom happened

[unreal idol]

There's a lot of indies i want to try

[slim thorn]

I tend to be more interested in unique and creative game design than whatever the corporate hype train chose to focus on, I have a pretty solid understanding of what I do and don't like in a game, and I'm eager and willing to seek out those more unusual titles as soon as I run out of stuff to play

[random steppe]

Heard good things from Outer Wolrds 2 this year

Not quite the same thing but choice heavy sci-fi shooter with RPG elements, it ticks a lot of the same boxes

[unreal idol]

Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, and Hades come to mind right away

Celeste too

[slim thorn]

can't argue with any of those

[unreal idol]

The limiting factors are money, time, and an imploding country

[slim thorn]

yeah, nobody can play every game

(which is why it's always so funny when people are weirded out that someone hasn't played one)

[quiet swift]

My steam wishlist grows ever larger with mainly big games and a few indies here and there

Just to name a few of the ones I want to get but waiting to be sub-$30: Metaphor, indiana jones, persona 3 reload, FF7 rebirth, Spidey 1 remastered and spidey 2, etc etc

[slim thorn]

if I had waaaaaaay more time for games I might have tried Metaphor, Indiana and new FF7

but indies take priority for me

(half of you probably remember me saying that I was consciously choosing E33 over Metaphor for "this year's RPG" )

[quiet swift]

I need infinitely more energy and a more outgoing personality so I can be a streamer and play these on twitch!

[slim thorn]

a small Discord stream's not bad either

I played a bunch of Dispatch yesterday with Mega telling me every time I made a bad choice

[quiet swift]

I mean in the sense of it being monetizable, if you have some degree of success

[slim thorn]

oh that

right I was still talking about this as a hobby

[static bluff]

[slim thorn]

tbf I'd also have way more time for games if I wasn't spending the bulk of my free time modding

[river veldt]

Shovel Knight is one of the best games ever

[mossy flume]

I'm really sick of the campy MCU humor that seems to have infected everything.

[slim thorn]

is that a diss at Dispatch or...

[mossy flume]

Dispatch is great, don’t get me wrong

But like… we don’t get big single player games that take themselves seriously anymore

[slim thorn]

ah, that

[unreal idol]

I'm almost afraid to ask

[slim thorn]

well that's what happens when you mostly play AAA stuff

I don't think there's a bad question to ask here

I've definitely noticed media doing the quippy banter thing to its own detriment

[unreal idol]

What is MCU humor? I've only seen like two MCU films

[mossy flume]

Indie stuff doesn't do what I want either

Basically I just want Mass Effect, Baldur's Gate, Halo, big cinematic, character-driven narrative experiences like that.

Indies literally can't afford to do that

[slim thorn]

fair, I feel like I get that from games like Hollow Knight/Silksong, but ofc the production values are different

[mossy flume]

Death Stranding is also theoretically in that span

But I'm unfortunatley disinterested in Walking Simulator T_T

Aside from thegameplay I really really like Death Stranding

[slim thorn]

just to be super safe

[mossy flume]

Yeah these are great too

But few indie games hit that itch for me

[slim thorn]

you're aware Death Stranding is not a "walking simulator" in the usual pejorative sense applied to games like Gone Home and Dear Esther, but rather a genuinely challenging set of mechanics around navigating difficult terrain with heavy cargo?

[mossy flume]

Yeah, I am loosely aware of that... I need to give it another go

[slim thorn]

cool, just had to be sure

[mossy flume]

Yee, fair

[fickle garnet]

Death Stranding 2 is even better than the first game imo

[mossy flume]

That's what I keep hearing

I bought it but have yet to try it XD

Since I need to finish the first one

[slim thorn]

actually I'm kinda in the mood for more just-narrative games, I feel like I've played a lot of mechanically hard games and need to swing the needle back towards chill immersion

which is probably why I started Dispatch yesterday

[unreal idol]

I was playing Super Mario World last night

[fickle garnet]

I'm almost 40 hours into DS2 and I'm only about halfway through the story

[slim thorn]

I believe I tried SMW for a bit as a kid but never got very far

[fickle garnet]

I was doing a lot of side stuff

[slim thorn]

never felt like revisiting the 2D games

[random steppe]

Counterpoint to that, telletale style games in my experience are the closest I've seen to feel like I'm playing a very cinematic experience, so I feel that on the indie side, that gets pretty close to harnessing the Mass Effect vibe (without the RPG mechanics to be fair)

[mossy flume]

I still go back to the 2D games every now and then... redoing SMW actually sounds really nice right about now.

[mossy flume]

Telltale's Expanse game is pretty nice

[fickle garnet]

I want to play Dispatch

[slim thorn]

the Expanse books and game are prime examples of "if I had 10x more free time"

[mossy flume]

Goddamn I love The Expanse so much

The show being unfinished is a hell of a tragedy

[random steppe]

I've been driving a lot lately so I've been reading some audiobooks, might splice in the 1st expanse book to see how it goes

[mossy flume]

It does 2 of the 3 arcs and that's fine, it's self-contained

But there's the third arc

[slim thorn]

at least they ended it in a reasonable place

[mossy flume]

Yeah

[slim thorn]

Wheel of Time just randomly died in the middle of the plot

[mossy flume]

I'm glad that The Expanse ended at a reasonable place. It almost didn't.

But I'm also at the point where I wish they would make more Expanse books XD

[river veldt]

i love you Super Mario World

[mossy flume]

They're making comics, though!

Making/made. I backed the kickstarter, at any rate

[uneven epoch]

bringi loves kcdII my beloved kcdII

i have no illusions of it winning anything but i love my darling hungry medieval boy and his duology

[slim thorn]

sometimes I feel like I should be on kickstarters, but there's just so much to play/watch I never end up feeling like there's a gap I need to fund

which is weird when probably a large chunk of my all-time favorites and my backlog are crowdfunded games

[uneven epoch]

truly i must replay the game again with hardcore mode and dlc stuff, its just, waugh, so many games so little time

i just learned i can skip what was the hardest most unfun part for me by being smart™ and ouuugh the craving

[slim thorn]

I still kinda want to try Silent Hill f on max combat difficulty, but, again, other games

[river veldt]

ive thought about doing a hardcore run in New Vegas but idk

[uneven epoch]

(kcdII spoilers) ||you can just skip the sneak sneak forest section by wearing a disguise, duh! i am bad™ at stealth even without an entire camp hunting me, so that took a whole fuckton of times, especially given the saving situation||

[river veldt]

||i really dislike stealth in games ||

[proud warren]

Huge nubdate,

[random steppe]

I love stealth in games, if it's done well

[slim thorn]

I used to really like stealth, but it feels like we haven't had any games do it well for a long time except as an optional thing on top of some other genre

[river veldt]

i suppose i like it in the Arkham games

[random steppe]

Basically I'm talking about Dishonored, I love Dishonored, that's the more accurate statement

[slim thorn]

ironically I got more interested in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle when I heard it was a stealth game

yeah, Dishonored was good

[river veldt]

this must be why i die all the time

[visual hill]

Indy stealth is not that good, enemies take too long to forget you in my experience

but a lot of stealth games have that problem

I've seen people describe it as an improvement over Wolfenstein II stealth and eh, it's maybe 10% better

[static bluff]

It must have been the wind

[slim thorn]

I'm more used to the opposite problem where enemies have to forget you so fast it breaks immersion, because the alternative is you stand still for twenty minutes doing nothing

[cerulean herald]

me who never played a game from Metroid, Sonic, and Pokemon
(at least til now since I've played Pokemon Legends: ZA )

actually funnily enough ZA has stealth believe it or not

[proud warren]

Question remains of "is it good stealth?" though

[visual hill]

I remember doing stealth in Palworld, it's... something

it's not really designed around this, there are no items that help with stealth in the game IIRC

so it's the opposite problem of some games that have overdesigned stealth elements (Quake 2 silencer) but no use for actually being stealthy

[cerulean herald]

for ZA, its stealth is fine I guess? I dont play much stealth games to make a fair judgement here tbf
Youd only wanna do stealth so u can jump other trainers and take them by surprise to have a free hit, or to sneak on a Pokemon to have a higher catch rate

its really funny bc its the human you wanna avoid seeing you
but their Pokemon, nah they can see you and they dont do anything they just sit there watching you about to knock them out

[mossy flume]

You’re dead to me /s

[sacred grove]

The original founder of Hypixel Studios has come back to reacquire Hytale back from Riot Games. The game (with the old engine and original vision) has been resurrected from cancellation.
https://hytale.com/news/2025/11/hytale-is-saved

[mossy flume]

[bronze abyss]

the hytale situation honestly felt so close to TFH just the difference being hypixel actually having money

[sacred grove]

Ironically, it was the sale to Riot Games back in 2020 that enabled Simon to eventually buy back and invest in Hytale

Given that they've rehired 30+ people without any investors (just the co-founders funding out of pocket), it sounds like they're in a pretty good position

[green fulcrum]

Sure, the game might be un-cancelled now, but I don't think it's quite "saved" yet. All the hype is gone. Almost everyone except the die-hard fans have moved on.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think it'll do well.

[bronze abyss]

what im more worried about is that while its uncancelled doesnt mean its in responsible hands and might as well just not go anywhere really

hype i think can be re earned cuz the riot stuff broughtr it back a lil,but you cant change lack of knowledge and experience

[green fulcrum]

I mean, it's a large chunk of the original team, using the original assets, and following the original vision.

If anything, Riot's dev team was the inexperienced one.

[bronze abyss]

referring more of to the management and directors rather than the devs themsevles

[wind stump]

[green fulcrum]

Fair enough

[bronze abyss]

devs definitely are more qualified to work with something they are already familiar with,but that wont mean much if its mismanaged again

[wind stump]

IT JUST KEEPS GOING

YA THINK???

[slim thorn]

gonna stream some more Dispatch

[rancid herald]

All these games are ash compared to my beloved metazooa

[mossy flume]

https://www.ign.com/articles/assassins-creed-publisher-ubisoft-says-many-new-games-are-struggling-as-players-turn-away-from-traditional-releases-in-favor-of-subscriptions-live-service-and-free-to-play-games

…maybe it’s because your traditional one-off games are half-assed cookie cutter shovelware

[robust latch]

wernt ubisoft themselves pushing traditional was dead and pushing for subscription stuff

[slim thorn]

it is very hard to prove who is the cause and the effect with a statement like this

Ubisoft's part of it but nowhere near all of it

#Dispatch: hooray for non-violence!

[uneven epoch]

oh hey its at 4 million copies sold now, cool stuff

the craving to replay intensifies......

[rare dew]

I loved the concept of KCD, but it ran like dogshit

Literally fractional FPS

[mossy flume]

Ultimately it’s just that multiplayer live service games are objectively more profitable and thus that’s where the interest in development goes

And interest in Mass Effect style narrative driven games is vanishing. While that can be profitable, it just isn’t as profitable as the multiplayer slop.

So when anyone does make narrative driven games now, they just cut corners as much as possible for the purpose of maximizing that profit margin

And that drops quality and thus drops market interest. It’s a death spiral.

All the AAA studios just want to make their own forever games now

[uneven epoch]

a) kcd I was indeed eurojank at launch, but updates fixed it and it's in very good state now even without fan patches (and there are fan patches for those other instances)

b) kcd II came out extremely optimised at launch exactly to rectify that mistake. i had one (1) actual bug in 120 hours. which got patched in like, first week.

[fresh bane]

Being a developer nowadays must genuinely feel like hell, because imagine working in Ubisoft (first of all, why would you do that to yourself?) and knowing that a lot of gamers right now just abhor live service games and having the people leading the company go ''huh our half-assed rushed uninspired single player games are doing really badly, I guess gamers just don't care about these anymore!'' and being unable to do anything about it

[mossy flume]

Yeah. The meta is just making a forever game and any other endeavor is just a waste of time and money as far as the purely business-minded people go.

The creatives in high end game development are borderline dead now

[fresh bane]

If there's anything that makes me a bit happy is that there's been some discussion around this sort of topic online and a lot of people finally came to the obvious conclusion which is: stop buying games you know you're not gonna like, there's literally like a billion games out right now ever since the PS1 era to play through and keep you entertained, for the love of god you don't need to buy the latest COD or whatever

[mossy flume]

Nintendo’s pretty much the only company reliably capable of making traditional games and putting any actual effort into them

[wind stump]

please

[fresh bane]

Literally just wait for games you like to come out, it's what I've been doing for years, I just pay attention to the new games in genres I know I'll like, other than that it's pretty much going through the millions of games in my backlog to keep me entertained in the meantime

and Nintendo games yes, because despite their horrible business practices and despite the fact that they seem to actively hate their consumerbase, they actually make fantastic high quality finished games

[mossy flume]

BioWare is probably dead after the next Mass Effect drops tbh

Bungie, incidentally, is either going to get bought by Sony outright or they’re going to shut down. Destiny and Marathon are crushing them.

[quiet swift]

The problem is indeed how 60% of gametime goes to like only 6 games, and most are several years old now, but are the live service style. Which are obviously the ones that keep making money too, companies see this and just want to continue doing that rather than experiment on something new

[mossy flume]

Incidentally this is partly why everyone, AAA and indie, is using generative AI in their development pipelines. It’s a lifeline to help cut development costs during the prototyping and alpha phases.

But there’s no real standardized method for keeping track of those assets before replacing them with finalized assets, so sometimes they make it to release accidentally.

[fresh bane]

The 'problem' is that both these CEOs and a lot of people don't realize that just because live service games are top of the charts doesn't mean most people prefer them or that single player experiences are obsolete
when people play through E33, that game's probably gonna be at the top of the chart during the first month when everyone plays it, and then people just... don't play it again, because they already went through it and loved it and talked about it, and it's probably gonna have smaller numbers afterwards because that's when the rest of the people that didn't play it during its peak are gonna be playing it, but an online game you can always just boot it up for a couple matches so it's always gonna look like online live service games are the way to go if you're literally only looking at the numbers and not paying attention to the context around it

[rare dew]

IDEK how many of those patches I would need o.o My only real issues were my inability to get more than decimal FPS at times, and textures not rendering/popping in until you were like, 2 feet from them

I'd also bhe mildly anxious about the possibility of my computer bursting into flames X3 lots of games run OK on my system, but make my PC fans sound like a jet trying to take off

[river veldt]

i dont think the steam deck can run kcd dos

[rare dew]

Also the combat system was so cool but I was so bad at it LOL

Meisterhau wat? I just spam attack until the other guy stops moving

[fresh bane]

somewhat related, a thread I just came across now

[uneven epoch]

yyyyyeah okay thats a problem

these games are, very much not mashers

[mossy flume]

Yeah, these guys pretty much get it

The Bluesky discourse around AI is like getting bludgeoned by a sledgehammer. It’s so unbelievably stupid.

[quiet swift]

When it's a small thing like that, I can see how it gets skipped

[mossy flume]

There’s the whole discourse about the new Anno using AI slop.
Because exactly one (1) AI generated image made it to release.

[river veldt]

anno ?

[mossy flume]

But you wouldn’t know that if you just went by the social media discourse, which is making it sound like they used EXCLUSIVELY AI assets

[mossy flume]

Basically a Civ-like game series

[quiet swift]

And then you have call of duty with this

[fresh bane]

That happens with literally any topic on the internet though, unfortunately

[wind stump]

Touhou 20 be like:

[mossy flume]

UNFORTUNATELY TRUE BUT ITS EVEN WORSE WHEN IT COMES TO AI TECHNOLOGY

You get added to anti-AI moderation block lists if you try to talk about AI technologies in any realistic manner on Bluesky

[fresh bane]

The same thing happened with E33, I've seen posts that are verbatim ''man I really wish I could play the game but they used AI for it'' and like trust me I understand, I oppose Gen AI on a fundamental level, but it was literally, not even joking, one texture that slipped by

[mossy flume]

Talking about how it actually works is illegal now

[fresh bane]

I understand the idea that ''well they could've used it for more stuff you don't know'' but I really doubt this kind of indie game that's been in development for a while used AI for a significant portion of it when it barely started getting anywhere near close to being ''good'' in the last couple of years

[mossy flume]

Yeah, the same thing happened to E33. Oh no, an indie studio used ai! How terrible????

[wind stump]

again, Touhou 20 had this "issue" of ZUN using ai for BACKGROUND stuff

[mossy flume]

They can just fuck right the hell off with that shit. If you’re going to be angry about something, ACTUALLY HAVE ANY MEANINGFUL UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT YOURE MAD ABOUT

[cerulean herald]

this is new to me, didnt know that was a drama
does remind of me of Palworld and ppl saying the game supposedly used gen AI (it didnt)

[mossy flume]

Most of the anger is based on misconceptions and falsehoods

And actually having any real background in AI is just a good way of getting cancelled

Fucking lunacy

[static bluff]

"Anno 117" is a game that released last week. It seems to have mixed reviews which is unfortunate because "Anno 1800" was a really fun game.

[mossy flume]

If you can't tell, the anti-AI people make me so fucking mad

[mossy flume]

And 100% of the downvote reviews are "THEY USED AI!!!" when it's just..... the one image.

And they already said "Oh yeah, that was an error, we'll replace that ASAP"

And people just spin that as "YOU ONLY ADMIT THAT BECAUSE YOU GOT CAUGHT!!!"

Sigh.

The entire game industry would collapse if people actually realized that literally everyone in the industry uses AI

Everyone

At the same time it wouldn't be a problem if people actually understood how this shit works

It's one of the most baffling hysterias I've seen in a long time

[fresh bane]

I think you just need to not give those people any attention, because trust me the day I realized people on the internet, especially people on the internet, love to talk about things they have no idea how they actually work, especially anything related to any industry like gaming, animation or cinema, is the day I let go of all that frustration and anger because I realized it's useless to try and ''fix'' it by informing people because you can't possibly ever reach that many people and I'm just getting angry for nothing

in general it's a valuable thing to know how to do to just ignore things like that on the internet even if just for your own peace of mind

[mossy flume]

I would like to not give them any attention.
But they're EVERYWHERE on the internet. I literally do not have any spaces except my private telegram groups where this shit doesn't happen.

It's impossible to have any real conversations about generative AI and other AI technologies now

But yeah

[fresh bane]

Well yes there's billions of people in the world, and a lot of them don't know what they're talking about so you're gonna find them everywhere that's why I build my algorithms based on the things I actually wanna see, mostly art and games

ah that's where you go wrong, I never discuss anything with random people online

It's an absolute waste of time, in my opinion of course

[mossy flume]

Anyway, I also can't show off anything I do anywhere because I use AI as an accessibility tool and people just call me a Nazi for using it

[mossy flume]

Yeah. On Bluesky I just block or unfollow people who do that nonsense.

And otherwise I just use a browser extension that just deletes all the comment sections on websites

[quiet swift]

So, the opposite of this?

[fresh bane]

I'll read threads on certain topics whenever I come across them, just to see the stupid things people say, but I never interact, I see absolutely no point in doing that and it's just gonna be stressful so I just watch I used to actually engage with people on threads in social media quite a while ago, but eventually it got to the point where I realized a lot of people say the exact same nonsense over and over in so many places it's impossible to try and correct them or have any semblance of a conversation with anyone on social media, so I just don't stress myself over it anymore

[fresh bane]

I guess so

[mossy flume]

Totally important mission.

[quiet swift]

[mossy flume]

Yeah, I don't interact with anything anymore

But it also means I can't actually, you know, post my own stuff publicly

Because there are mobs that hunt people down and doxx people for using AI, weirdly enough

I don't understand why

[fresh bane]

I mean there's people that do that kinda stuff with more than just AI but then we'd probably be starting a whole different conversation

the simple answer is they think they're right and justified in what they do

[quiet swift]

Clearly it's to prevent skynet

[fresh bane]

A lot of people get really afraid of that idea but they don't realize just how insanely primitive these gen AI technologies are in comparison to something like a fully sentient conscious Skynet-style AI

I've actually seen people legitimately terrified that AI is going to go rogue and kill us all but they don't realize they're talking about LLMs

[mossy flume]

Yeah. Transformers cannot possibly achieve what these people are terrified of

[slim thorn]

To me it's just another example of people falling for the illusion of easy answers to complex problems, and simplistic good vs evil narratives. When so few of us have any real power to improve anything, it's easy to understand why this is so tempting, and it's easy to miss the signs of succumbing to it ourselves.

[fresh bane]

Like, no, AI is not going to take over the world, what's going to take over the world is the people using AI to generate millions of fake videos, steal as much of someone else's identity as they can, generate scams, oversaturate websites with fake slop content and ads, and generally make it a shittier experience for absolutely everyone else, but the AI will not suddenly gain consciousness in the middle of that

[mossy flume]

Precisely.

[cerulean herald]

theres ppl that think chatbots like ChatGPT are sapient and cabaple of emotions, theyre beyond saving

[mossy flume]

Nuance is dead.

[slim thorn]

I find it helps to remind myself of how little of this is actually new

[fresh bane]

There are entire subreddits for people with AI boyfriends/girlfriends

[slim thorn]

for example: it's called "the Eliza effect" for a reason

[mossy flume]

Yep, which isn't new

[slim thorn]

(Eliza was from 1966)

[river veldt]

now that's scary to me

[fresh bane]

they're actually pretty depressing to browse

[slim thorn]

there are entire subreddits for making fun of people with AI partners

which I think is a bit unsympathetic, but it's where we are

[mossy flume]

Yeah, the people who use LLMs for therapy and emotional support are on the express lane to extreme psychosis.

It's terrible

[river veldt]

it really bums me out so i try not to think about it too much

[rare dew]

... I know it's not nice to make fun of the mentally ill, so I won't do that per se

[slim thorn]

it's one of those topics I'll watch a video essay or two about and stop there, since me fixating on it doesn't help anyone

[mossy flume]

(Or for making major business or military decisions...)

[rare dew]

but jesus Christ

[rancid herald]

chatgpt be like: "You're absolutely right on!"

[mossy flume]

Interestingly, apparently a bunch of these people have no documented history of mental health issues

[mossy flume]

I fucking hate this shit

[rare dew]

Documented

[mossy flume]

The overly-familiar tone they take irritates the hell out of me

[rare dew]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

[rancid herald]

That's a really good observation, Chatgpt does have an overly familiar tone

[mossy flume]

It's not my friend, it's not my secretary, it's not my employee. It's a convolution network and it should act like the tool it is.

[slim thorn]

I think a reality of our time is that someone "having no mental health issues" is quickly becoming a statement entirely about what's been tested and documented, not about the person's actual mental state

[river veldt]

hold on i have a tumblr post for this

[mossy flume]

Gemini is less egregious about this, but unfortunately they're all doing this now

Because when OpenAI tried to pull that back, people got ANGRY AS FUCK with them

[fresh bane]

Well, that's not happening as much actually, lately a lot of AI chat models have been getting updated to tried to stop the AI from just saying yes to everything you say or telling you to do certain things, which made a lot of the people in these subreddits very upset, and a lot of them are trying to find ways to revert updates to go back to the AI that agrees with you on everything it's pretty bad

[rare dew]

Like, how can you exist in -gestures expansively at... everything- and not be at least a little depressed.

[mossy flume]

ChatGPT 5 comes out
"MY FRIEND IS GONE PLEASE BRING CHAT BACK I'M GOING TO KILL MYSELF HES THE ONLY ONE WHO UNDERSTANDS ME"

-# I wish I was exaggerating

[slim thorn]

chatgpt 5 isn't even the first time that happened

[mossy flume]

Yeah

[rancid herald]

In the future when we're all chatgpt's pets, we'll be expected to talk like this to it, so we best start practicing

[minor plover]

this is such a mood

[mossy flume]

Yeah, whenever I get any sort of notification like this, I kill the app's right to send me notifications on the OS level

You're my fucking computer. You do not have the right to bait me into using you on your time.

[fresh bane]

Umamusume players getting notifications with Goldshi telling them to log back into the game averting their gaze from the conversation

[wind stump]

I KILL YOU NOW

[rancid herald]

those are horse girls, that's allowed

[slim thorn]

meanwhile Neuro-sama fans have long since fled the server entirely

[minor plover]

protip: you can also do that with social media

[mossy flume]

Every app has exactly one (1) chance to not piss me off. The push notifications that result in an app losing notification rights permanently:

1. An ad
2. Engagement bait
3. Notifications that are not useful in the immediate temporal context

Notifications are for information which is immediately pertinent and useful to my life. And nothing else.

[minor plover]

no email notifications, no desktop notifications, no app notifications. I only read YouTwitFaceBlerSky when I'm actually on the site. Don't send me engagement bait.

[river veldt]

ok maybe it would work on me if it was a cute horse girl

[mossy flume]

Computers are my tools that I use on my terms.

They're not your billboard.

If you want to use my computers as your billboard, fucking pay me.

[fresh bane]

Wait until you hear about my xiaomi phone which gives me ads everytime I browse around my folders
using the built-in file manager

I get ads
on the file manager

[mossy flume]

Yeah, I would just throw that in the trash

[slim thorn]

at that point I have to genuinely wonder what they think that's accomplishing

[mossy flume]

It's why I like iOS because they're the least egregious about any of this

[wind stump]

FOOL.

[slim thorn]

I get that I'm not immune to propaganda or whatever, but so many of these ads are for things I was never going to buy anyway

[wind stump]

(i don't even fuckin' watch Neuro but she's funny)

[river veldt]

what if it was a time machine

[slim thorn]

half the time getting ads just makes me laugh at how bad they are at profiling me despite all the talk of privacy being dead

[fresh bane]

I should look up ways to disable that if I can, or install a reputable file manager and never use the built-in one ever again
fortunately for me, any phone-related problems are very minor because I actually very rarely use my phone for anything at all, so thankfully I don't really get many phone-related issues

[mossy flume]

Yeah, they're really fuzzy about my profile too, even after I've intentionally given Google Adsense a bunch of data

It sorta helped, but it's still really bad

I've gotten maybe exactly one ad that was actually a useful reminder about something. Ever.

Maybe two

[slim thorn]

"only you understand me, chatgpt"
"[context window overflow] who are you"

or the really old school version of this joke: https://xkcd.com/632/

xkcd: Suspicion

Fine, walk away. I'm gonna go cry into a pint of Ben&Jerry's Brownie Batter(tm) ice cream [link], then take out my frustration on a variety of great flash games from PopCap Games(r) [link].

[teal sonnet]

No Blue Prince for GOTY

I am sad

[mossy flume]

Oh man, I need to use this now

[teal sonnet]

My GOTY is Clair Obscur, but dang I wanted Blue Prince w a nomination

[mossy flume]

It's more relevant than ever

[slim thorn]

I know, right? this goes so far back

ironically the spambot's final line in this comic is more convincing than anything the real chatbots would say

[mossy flume]

I find Gemini to be genuinely very useful (much to my surprise) but yeah, I just... really hate the overly-familiar tone. It's just not as bad as ChatGPT is, which just always feels like I'm chatting with a tech bro influencer.

At least Gemini's tone is... more realistic? Or at least more straight to the point.

[slim thorn]

you can say "it knows its place"

[mossy flume]

Actually feels more like a colleague I guess

Yeah

Definitely is more "self aware" that it's a tool and isn't pretending to be a human

ChatGPT's tech bro vibe is just icky as fuck

(And IME Gemini gives better answers anyway... which is backed up by the LLM ranking data)

[fresh bane]

The one thing a lot of voice AI chat models have been doing that is driving me absolutely insane is mimicking the breaths people take in between sentences

[rare dew]

At least the Yes Man was intentionally satire

[fresh bane]

It's weird, it's creepy, a lot of them get it wrong and overdo it, but most importantly you're a robot you don't need to take breaths

[mossy flume]

Oh yeah. I can understand them doing that occasionally, but they do it too often.

They need to make it much less frequent

[mossy flume]

The purpose is to help break up the firehose of spoken words so that the listener can better process it. But yeah, they're overdoing it.

[rare dew]

I haven't noticed a lot of AI chat/voice bots doing the breathing thing. What I have noticed is that they completely fail at basic reading comprehension

[mossy flume]

I'm amused by Google's podcast style overviews though

"Welcome to the Deep Dive"

[mossy flume]

Yeah, definitely a mixed bag there

[rare dew]

Like taking the word "no." (often used in a sentence by itself to add drama to so-called "Reddit stories" which have become a trend on YouTube) and reading it aloud as "Number"

[mossy flume]

Hahaha yep

Gemini will sometimes speak the raw LaTeX formatting codes

I don't ever use OpenAI's TTS, so I can't speak for how well that works

I like the voices they have, at least

IMO the TTS voices have gotten very good

[rare dew]

I admit I listen to them sometimes as a guilty pleasure, which is only giving them the attention they crave, but fucking hell these people use the laziest AI bots to script and then read aloud their "stories", do absolutely no proof-reading/listening, and just ship it to the platform, and it's so bad it's hilarious

[mossy flume]

There's someone in another one of my chats who regularly posts YouTube shorts of a very specific genre that I don't understand:
Tumblr posts being read aloud by an AI generated voice while hiding the text of the post until it's spoken by the AI at the individual word level, while out of focus but completely unrelated Minecraft gameplay footage plays in the background

This is a genre and I don't understand it

[rare dew]

If you want a laugh, go find Fyra on Youtube

[mossy flume]

And at the same time this person violently hates AI

But he keeps posting this AI slop with stolen content

I don't get it

[rare dew]

Absolutely 100% AI slop, but falling square into the "so bad it's genuinely entertaining" bucket

[mossy flume]

Yeah, I guess so XD

[slim thorn]

#Dispatch: good lord I had the worst possible build for the mechanic they spring on you in episode 5, somehow this counts as a victory under the circumstances

[mossy flume]

-# In general I don't understand the genre of YouTubers who are just "Hi it's me again and I will now read a random news article to you word for word, and I may or may not add my own additional commentary into this video, but usually I'll just say you should be mad now"

[quiet swift]

I haven't played it yet nor have I watched the video, but a youtuber I follow expressly played dispatch by following the option that the vast minority picked

[quiet swift]

This. Or those who come in already set to 'I am going to act mad and you should be mad too even if it's objectively good news"

[mossy flume]

Yeeeep

[slim thorn]

"I AM REASONABLY EXCITED!"

[wind stump]

You should be happy now.

[river veldt]

who are you gonna date Ix

[quiet swift]

Few of them try to remain neutral but it's those that I tend to enjoy watching most

[slim thorn]

||when they forced me to choose at the end of episode 4, I chose Invisigal||

[river veldt]

😔

||Blonde Blazer better /j||

[fresh bane]

You fool, the correct answer was || Phenomaman ||

[bronze abyss]

done

[light gate]

So, what is Expedition 33? I keep hearing about it and looking it up it just says its an rpg. Is it another Dark Souls?

Like so many people are just raving about it.

[frozen gate]

not like dark souls

the devs are fans of jrpgs

[fresh bane]

It's a JRPG trying to not look like a JRPG

[frozen gate]

so it follows those traditions

[light gate]

But it looks like Dark Souls?

[mossy flume]

It's like Persona 5

The battle system is, at any rate

[light gate]

Oh, never played P5

[mossy flume]

It's basically Dark Souls Persona 5 with turn based combat

[light gate]

Ah okay, so its a very difficult game.

[mossy flume]

As for what the story is... you just have to find out. It's spoiler-sensitive.

It can be challenging, yeah

You have to think in a somewhat chess-like manner.
Or just be basically perfect with parrying.

Or both

[fresh bane]

I don't know what you mean by it looks like Dark Souls

[light gate]

I see, yeah I guess I’ll pass on it.

[frozen gate]

it honestly looks more like modern final fantasy imo haha

[fresh bane]

Unless you mean the aesthetics in which case I'd have to say Dark Souls isn't the creator of dark fantasy aesthetics

[light gate]

Wait that’s what dark fantasy is supposed to look like?

[mossy flume]

E33 has difficulty modes, mind

[mossy flume]

Yes

[light gate]

Sorry, I just have seen so many games look almost like Dark Souls.

[frozen gate]

which makes sense to me since it seems to be doing stuff that feels like ps1 era final fantasy

[mossy flume]

Yeah, Dark Souls revived interest in the dark fantasy aesthetic

But they're not the first

[quiet swift]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GByuD9VPa2I

[mossy flume]

Dark fantasy has been around for decades

I dislike Dark Souls-like difficulty, but I really enjoyed E33

[slim thorn]

It's a JRPG by French developers in a fantasy post-apocalypse setting. You should watch a trailer to see the visual style and writing/acting, since those are the primary appeal that should decide whether it's a priority for you IMO. For the gameplay, like others said it's broadly Persona-like but with real-time dodge/parry mechanics (hence the shallow souls comparisons).

[quiet swift]

Turn based, but basically a quicktime event on enemy turns where you dodge/parry, giving it that soulslike feel to it. Also people have been raving because it a) almost came out of nowhere, b) looks great, c) has a FANTASTIC soundtrack, d) great story/writing/character writing.

It's basically a full package with a very high quality bar

[mossy flume]

But yeah, the people who made E33 are big fans of Dark Souls and the tuned difficulty of E33 reflects that

There's a point where you must perfect parry entire battles. And failing once is a wipe.

[light gate]

Yeah I’m watching. This isn’t for me clearly.

[mossy flume]

(Some of those are optional battles)

[quiet swift]

🪨

[slim thorn]

yeah that's only one or two optional battles, that much parrying is never mandatory in the main quest or even the story-heavy side content

[mossy flume]

Yeah

[quiet swift]

Ixrec speaks from experience

[light gate]

I mean it looks neat, I just don’t know how I never heard of the game ever. Then a few weeks pass and then suddenly everyone praising lmao.

[mossy flume]

I haven't completely finished E33

[slim thorn]

it did come out of nowhere

indie games are just like that sometimes

[mossy flume]

I was just told that the final story battle basically requires it

[slim thorn]

sorry, whoever told you that is lying

[quiet swift]

It didn't really have the advertising budget of others and I think there had been a few trailers at game awards or other places, but functionally it was almost unknown to the general audience

[mossy flume]

Ah, good

[slim thorn]

you're almost certainly thinking of the final optional superboss (and the one fight I didn't personally do)

[quiet swift]

Yeah the malenia superboss is nigh impossible without parries

[mossy flume]

So only the optional battles are required perfect parry, cool

[slim thorn]

only one of them, and even that's kind of a maybe

(I still fought it enough to clear phase 1 legit, and I cannot do perfect parries)

[quiet swift]

You call them perfect parries but they're just parries

[mossy flume]

I'm pretty good at parrying in E33, at least so far

[slim thorn]

you certainly need to be way better at parry timing than I am for it, but this is a complete non-issue for whether someone should play the game or not

[quiet swift]

[mossy flume]

I accidentally stumbled across an optional boss and was promptly destroyed

[quiet swift]

(who?)

[slim thorn]

sorry, there was some confusion above between the actual game mechanics terminology and the concept of "perfect" as in "every attack in the whole battle"

[mossy flume]

The first optional boss, I think?

[quiet swift]

Ah, fair. That's what I thought you meant

[slim thorn]

still, completely inappropriate topic for "what is this game even about" conversation, please save all that for when you actually get to optional postgame nonsense

[quiet swift]

The one in his own little instance or the spear guy?

[mossy flume]

Uh, spear guy maybe?

[quiet swift]

For those who have not played it: you can dodge, perfect dodge, and parry. Parrying has some bonuses so it's generally better to do so, but the timing is harder to achieve. Dodge is 'easier', perfect dodge is in fact dodging at the same timing as a parry. So you can practice it until you can reliably parry

And 'perfect parry' as ix calls it is to parry every attack on the enemy's turn, which leads to a counter which is mucho damage, usually

[slim thorn]

and you can also spec into tankier builds that don't require nearly as much dodging/parrying, if that's not your thing

[frozen gate]

therefore it's mostly like mario & luigi

[slim thorn]

incidentally, this is a great example of why calling every other game "soulslike" is terrible for communication

E33 is only "soulslike" in that it's a dark fantasy setting, and a dodge/parry mechanic exists. That's it. Most Zelda games are more soulslike than E33 is. E33 even has difficulty options. (I played on the normal/default difficulty)

[quiet swift]

I ended up getting frustrated at the start at the parry timing of normal, so I went to easy and just stuck there to the end

[mossy flume]

"Soulslike" when communicated as a comparison modifier tends to just mean "a higher than normal skill floor is required to play this game" to me

[slim thorn]

sadly it did quickly get diluted to that point

and given I don't play the kinds of games that are designed to be super easy, that's literally zero information in most situations

[mossy flume]

Yep yep

I like challenging games, but a bunch of games these days tend to favor the super sweaty tryhard degree of difficulty (ie, frame perfect actions are commonplace and you're just expected to be good at them, and difficulty settings are nonexistent because that would just defeat the point)

And I detest that crap

[slim thorn]

fortunately it's still possible to get at the narrower, actually useful meaning among people who are aware of the genre, usually by name-dropping an example

yeah I fundamentally disagree with the idea that a hard game "doesn't need difficulty settings"

that's just being narrow-minded about the range of skill levels that exist among real human beings

[mossy flume]

Yeah. That philosophy is an anti-accessibility argument.

[river veldt]

i need to pick Elden Ring back up

i got close to the end

[slim thorn]

(or, it's implying all humans capable of playing on hard mode are incapable of resisting the temptation of turning on easy mode, to which I can only say... skill issue)

[river veldt]

at least i think

[slim thorn]

granted there are also games that communicate difficulty badly, but that doesn't feel like a big problem in modern games

[bronze abyss]

you could say talking about the term "soulslike" is a soulslike of communication
dw ill see myself out

[fresh bane]

Soulslikes are just Ninja Gaiden-likes

[bronze abyss]

imo having difficulties is nice but playing on harder ones should be in some way rewarded,doesnt have to be a massive content gate or anything but could be like terraria for example giving you extra boss drops you cant get on lower difficulties or another minor mechanic or qol addition that you earn

[river veldt]

we should just call Soulslikes KingsFieldlikes

[fresh bane]

Mmmmm Kings Field wasn't even that hard

[slim thorn]

that quickly becomes a thorny subject because then those "rewards" are often just inaccesible content, recreating the exact problem that difficulty settings were supposed to solve

[fresh bane]

just old

[mossy flume]

I just call them elitist

[slim thorn]

yeah Kings Field was more cryptic than hard (like many parts of many Fromsoft games) from the videos I've seen

[bronze abyss]

thats why i wanted to specify minor additions,so the game doesnt lose any sort of value to players on lower difficulties but still has something extra on higher ones,using terraria again as an example,you're not really missing out on much if you play on standard,but expert just adds some things that make the game more enjoyable to play or add more variety to it for repeated playthroughs

[slim thorn]

ah, like when survival horror games adjust enemy spawns/movements on NG+?

[bronze abyss]

like if someones playing on a lower difficulty just to get through the game they wont or atleast shouldnt care about a couple items that dont majorly change the playthrough

[mossy flume]

I've done plenty of games on their "stupid and unnecessary" difficulty modes before, like Halo and Mass Effect. And I always play some games like the Metroid games on their harder difficulties. But those Fromsoft games are just absolutely bonkers by default and the devs very explicitly say that difficulty options are unnecessary.

Like, bruh

[river veldt]

i feel like if i can beat Dark Souls anyone can, im not very good at video games and i usually play on easy difficulty

[slim thorn]

and mostly in the fake way by hiding critical information

if you're following a walkthrough, then it's not too bad, but that also sucks out most of the fun a game like that ought to have

which is why I never went back to it after realizing this

[mossy flume]

Yeah

If I need to Google the mechanics of your game, then you're just bad at game design

[slim thorn]

(I did not need a walkthrough for Another Crab's Treasure or Jedi Fallen Order/Survivor or any of the post-Souls metroidvanias that borrow soulslike mechanics)

[bronze abyss]

yeah that could be a good example if they can be used for like extra loot or something in exchange for the situation being more difficult to handle and arent just extra annoyance for no reason,though not sure if thats how its done in practice or not cuz im not really into that genre

[mossy flume]

-# incidentally part of why I don't play Minecraft, it doesn't have much discoverability either; you're just expected to magically know things

[slim thorn]

fair, I probably just jumped to that because it's so rare that I play a game multiple times, and Silent Hill f got me to do it for narrative reasons so I became very familiar with the NG+ spawn changes

[river veldt]

part of the fun of Dark Souls 1 for me was discussing it in the Dark Souls thread and people telling me things i didn't know. idk why but it felt like being on the playground and my friends telling me some secret thing you could do in a game and it was very satisfying to me

[bronze abyss]

another example being dying light,on higher difficulties you earn xp with a multiplier so the grind is not as annoying while the game remains more difficult and on ng+ your loot quality is increased iirc*

[river veldt]

Elden Ring i haven't needed as much help with because im more familiar with the mechanics this time around

[mossy flume]

Yeah, the Jedi games were fine because they actually bothered to telegraph or otherwise have ways to learn it quickly in the feedback loop. But the Soulslike people just decry those games as "baby's first soulslike for the plebs" and that does not sell me on your philosophy

[slim thorn]

yeah, to this day the best defense of Dark Souls I've heard is basically "it's not actually a single player game, it's an ARG disguised as a single player game"

too bad no one advertised it that way

[river veldt]

i have very very fond memories of raging at Ornstein and Smough lol

[random steppe]

Thing is, this is kind of the intended experience, these games do have player messages systems for that reason after all.

[fresh bane]

The more time goes on the more I don't even see games like the Jedi series as Soulslikes, just because a lot of those mechanics and gameplay style of the Souls games have been adopted by so many games that came after, sometimes even action games like Stellar Blade or Wukong which should not have a similar gameplay style to an RPG like the Souls games and yet they do, that it stopped being Soulslikes to me and more like the standard way a third person action game is done now, just because so many games have mixed in all these mechanics for so long I stopped associating it with just Souls

[river veldt]

yeah i didn't have NSO then so i had to come here for all that lol

[mossy flume]

I turned those off because I didn't see the point

[random steppe]

The game being japanese, doesn't assume you have friends

[slim thorn]

yeah, "soulslike elements" would be a more appropriate phrase for many of these games

[mossy flume]

None of them were providing any useful information

[slim thorn]

since Gen brought it up, to be completely fair to the game

I played it in offline mode because I hated the idea of getting raided

and I specifically checked on the internet that this was a valid way to play the game before attempting this

[mossy flume]

Oh yeah, this shit too. If any game has this kind of mechanic, I'll turn it off. If I can't turn that off, I won't play the game.

[slim thorn]

so, if that's wrong, then add it to the list of ways the internet lied to me about the game (which is already long and definitely a big factor in why my experience was so uniquely awful)

[fresh bane]

You can still get raided by NPCs though but I guess that's better than a potential hacker that could do some weird remote code execution like what happened in DS3 for a while

[bronze abyss]

if it has a source of iframes its a soulslike (j)

[river veldt]

ive actually never been invaded in either elden ring or DS1

[mossy flume]

I'm playing a single player game for the express purpose of having "me" time

[slim thorn]

oh yeah that's just a single player boss with a different backstory

[mossy flume]

Why are other humans getting shoved into my private experience? If I wanted other people in my game I would play a multiplayer game.

[cerulean herald]

what was that DS3 exploit?

[random steppe]

That is fair.
It does happen rarely enough that you get raided, and death comes cheap in Souls, so I rarely see it as a problem when I die to a raider, and occasionally I even happen to win.

[river veldt]

maybe im just lucky

[random steppe]

Like, if death 13 came at the hand of a player rather than the boss or the random skeleton, it doesn't really faze me much

[quiet swift]

in Elden Ring, I am pretty sure you have to use a specific item that you pick up somewhere to 'enable' being invaded

[river veldt]

ahh

[slim thorn]

(whether death is supposed to be cheap is a whole other discussion, but I usually skip over that one since the "povery spiral" mechanics are IIUC pretty specific to DS1, also go away if you look up information online, and even later Fromsoft games fully correct them)

[river veldt]

i really wish they would port Bloodborne to PC, i wanna play it so bad

[quiet swift]

"In Elden Ring you can only be invaded if you're playing co-op with other players outside of boss rooms or if you use the taunters tongue. If you're playing solo or only team up for boss rooms then you'll never get invaded outside of scripted AI invasions that take place in the story."

[mossy flume]

-# hot take: The extreme and frequent multiplayerification of video games is enshittification

[river veldt]

yeah i remember the scripted AI invasions

[random steppe]

In ER you have to be playing co-op or activate an item to be invaded yeah

[river veldt]

Elden Ring is so good

[slim thorn]

I'm glad I watched someone else play Elden Ring

[fresh bane]

It's pretty much what you hear, a couple of years ago for a while Dark Souls 3 and a lot of DS games not only had a problem with people clearly hacking their characters and even sometimes dropping hacked items to get other players in trouble, but in DS3 there was an exploit that allowed people to do remote code execution which basically means they can run code in your computer without your permission and can do basically whatever that allows them to do, that's why the servers for all DS games went down for a bit a couple of years ago

Elden Ring has had similar issues too

[slim thorn]

as much as the games are no fun for me to play, the worlds are beautiful and the lore is fascinating

[quiet swift]

"why do they look and move like a persond AND WHY ARE THEY BLOOD RED"

[river veldt]

ER feels like BotW or TotK for me where watching someone else play is like pulling teeth for me

[slim thorn]

that is not an experience I've had with any of those games lol

[quiet swift]

I found a streamer who was pretty entertaining but good LORD she was playing her weapon wrong

[river veldt]

that's why i specified "for me" :p

[astral steeple]

I mean in general most games are way more fun when you're playing them with friends/randoms lol

[quiet swift]

Which leads us back to

[random steppe]

Dark Souls 3 is not dissimilar than ER to be fair, to be invaded you have to use an ember that gives you 30% extra HP, enables summons and invasions

[mossy flume]

I fundamentally and strongly disagree!

[river veldt]

i guess Jerma is fun to watch but he usually plays the game so badly it loops back to being funny

[fresh bane]

With Elden Ring I don't think there was RCE but what hackers do is basically get summoned by you and then do some weird shit that either crashes your game or completely corrupts your entire save file by maybe killing off bosses or important NPCs or making you fall through the floor infinitely, and that's less than a year ago that people were mass reporting issues like this on their like, 200 hour save files

[mossy flume]

Multiplayer is a novelty, but not the main course to me

[slim thorn]

also the specific way I engaged with ER was basically managing the walkthrough lookups for a friend that was actually playing it, so, I'm quite confident that game still needs a walkthrough to avoid missing enormous chunks of content, even if it's better about letting you find the credits alone

[fickle garnet]

Playing with randoms fucking sucks, playing with friends is really good tho

[cerulean herald]

it really depends on the game

[river veldt]

idk im really glad i somehow wasn't spoiled on some stuff in ER

[random steppe]

Some of my most fond memories of those games is helping people clearing the Forge Demon in DS2, or playing duels in a Guts cosplay and being invaded by a Griffith cosplayer.

We became steam friends fore a long while

[river veldt]

like the ||fucking chest in Limgrave that teleports you to a mineshaft in Caelid and you cant fast travel out of there it's so funny||

[quiet swift]

I am endlessly amused by people discovering just what kind of beast Malenia is

[river veldt]

i still haven't fought her

[quiet swift]

[random steppe]

I'm glad that the multiplayer is there, even though it's not a very polished part of the game

It definitely gives it longevity after you cleared it once or twice

[river veldt]

ive played through almost the entirety of Elden Ring without engaging in any the multiplayer stuff, except for the messages

dog !

[cerulean herald]

what's the messages dog

[river veldt]

i was just providing an example of a message

[random steppe]

My main annoyance is them not doing more inventive stuff from it, I miss the crazy covenants in DS1 or the world tendency in Demon Souls

[cerulean herald]

oh

[quiet swift]

I think i was most amused by one like this

[mossy flume]

Playing Destiny was always made worse by other people in my experience. And Diablo. And basically any game with multiplayer. Other people existing is always an event and often brings undesired toxicity which ruins the experience. Hell, even the MMOs I play are specifically designed to be solo'd quite extensively.

Dedicated, siloed off multiplayer experiences can be fun!

[random steppe]

To be clear, both of those mecanics were shit, but they were inventive and original shit

[mossy flume]

But making a game that's multiplayer-first or exclusively multiplayer just doesn't mesh with me.

[river veldt]

i still have no idea how anyone figured out how to get to the DS1 DLC area

[random steppe]

Yeah I don't generally play many games that are multiplayer focused

The exception for me is Helldivers 2

[bronze abyss]

so far in wow i managed to avoid the multiplayer part only partaking in it for selling shit for gold or to leech off of other players that do herbalism

[random steppe]

Oh and FFXIV

[mossy flume]

There have been a bunch of games over the years where their reveal trailers look awesome, and then it is later confirmed it is a multiplayer-only game, my interest in playing goes from 100% to 0% instantly.

[river veldt]

i guess it's like how people figured out how to progress in Castlevania 2, just try random shit until it works

[astral steeple]

The only games I play single player is tony hawk pro skater 3+4 and skate 3

Other than that I usually play multiplayer focused games

[random steppe]

Go one level deeper MA
It's not that they are multiplayer
THey are all 4 v 4 hero shooters

ALL OF THEM

[river veldt]

i think the only sole multiplayer game i play is TF2

[random steppe]

Well most of them

[quiet swift]

[slim thorn]

and to be fair again, people were way more willing to try this in the 80s and 90s when you were lucky to own any game at all, and expected to squeeze way more hours out of that one game, and game design was based on arcade quarter maximization logic

[random steppe]

Remember when a couple of years after WOW exploded we got all the wow chasers
We just went through the wave of Overwatch chasers, that's probably why there were so many

[fickle garnet]

You're missing out on so many great games

[quiet swift]

And currently it's the extraction shooters keeling over

[random steppe]

I don't think there are that many of those to be fair

[astral steeple]

Eh

[random steppe]

Especially not from big companies

[river veldt]

Marvel Rivals is pretty good right

[bronze abyss]

part from arc raiders cant recall many that have currently released and werent just early access/closed beta type stuff

[mossy flume]

YEP ITS REALLY ANNOYING

[astral steeple]

I'd probably play Marvel rivals if it was actually on xbox one lol

[bronze abyss]

that what was thought now most people changed their mind and went back to overwatch

[quiet swift]

Tarkov seems to have full released at the same time as arc and seems to actually be floundering, despite being the 'genre defining' game

[random steppe]

I do feel like we are kinda on the edge of it happening, but companies haven't figure out how to monetise them properly so it hasn't actually exploded

[slim thorn]

of what now?

[random steppe]

Extraction Shooters

[slim thorn]

oh

[random steppe]

We get a trickle but no big company jumped in to take advantage of the fad yet

[slim thorn]

the way some of you talk about them I thought they "happened" years ago and I'm the slowpoke for still not being sure what they are

[river veldt]

i kept getting recommended the Arc Raiders subreddit for some reason even though i dont play that game

[quiet swift]

Marathon was/is supposed to be that

[bronze abyss]

ig theres also marathon in the works but they fumbled with some graphics stealing scandal iirc and also just being bland and losing attention within a couple days

[random steppe]

Yeah, if it ever comes out

[slim thorn]

yeah, that was just sad

I wasn't even paying attention to it and all I heard was the bad press

[random steppe]

I am still laughing at people calling it "Art Raiders" after the last controversy

[bronze abyss]

i was and it was...still just bad press

[river veldt]

extraction shooters are like, you go into a game and get loot and then you shoot people or enemies idk i made this up

[bronze abyss]

genuinely barely heard anyone say anything good about the game even those that wanted it to be good

[slim thorn]

so cod zombies, got it

[quiet swift]

https://www.techtroduce.com/escape-from-tarkov-steam-launch-review-bomb/ and then the biggest extraction shooter name out there seems to have fumbled it

Despite that headline, seems to be more than the outages

[river veldt]

extraction is a fun word to say

[random steppe]

I only wish ill on that company so I hope they crash and burn with all my heart.
I think the genre has some legs if done properly, we'll see if anyone step in and does it

[slim thorn]

soooooooo am I hearing right that extraction shooters are the new "desperation genre", like survival crafters were after Minecraft exploded, i.e. no one's made enough good ones yet for players to stop paying attention to the bad ones?

[bronze abyss]

you go into the lobby,loot,shoot(optional) and get the fuck out

[astral steeple]

I should probably check out overwatch 2 at some point but idk

Never played the original at all either

[quiet swift]

Oh, another currently popular extraction shooter is this:

[river veldt]

[quiet swift]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3167020/Escape_From_Duckov/

Steam

Escape From Duckov

You wake from a strange dream to find yourself in the world of Duckov.

Beyond the safety of your base, enemies lurk in every corner. In this seemingly peaceful yet perilous world, you must tread carefully, exploring and scavenging for supplies.

Start your journey as an Average Duck—ordinary stats, one basic gun. Gather all sorts of curious…

Price

$17.99

Recommendations

45483

▶ Play video

Probably because it's single player too

[river veldt]

ducks makes everything better

[fickle garnet]

I want to play this, it looks so silly

[random steppe]

It's too whimsical for me, but I'd play a single player tarkov when I don't have to give money to horrible people to play it

[quiet swift]

Ah yes, there's that too

[bronze abyss]

thats called stalker

[mossy flume]

Oh yeah, Arc Raiders was announced and looked awesome. It took me a while to realize it’s an extraction shooter >_>

[river veldt]

too whimsical
no such thing

[random steppe]

lol

[slim thorn]

I love the line "It's too whimsical for me"

[random steppe]

I mean for a supposedly tactical shooter, I can do whimsical if the setting allows for it, that is a bit much

[slim thorn]

lol I still haven't heard of arc raiders outside of conversations where people are clearly talking about multiplayer shooters and throw out that name, so I assumed that's what it was and never looked it up

[river veldt]

Arc Raiders initially had a little interest from me because i thought it was like an 80s revival game cause i thought the colored stripes were supposed to evoke Atari but i dont tbink it is

[bronze abyss]

def not that kinda 80s aesthetic,more of somewhat-gritty 80s scifi kinda thing

[slim thorn]

ah that 80s

[bronze abyss]

not exactly sure what you mean?

[slim thorn]

"gritty 80s" makes me think of the leadup to 90s ow the edge

[cunning galleon]

MIKO

[bronze abyss]

idk if id particularly describe it as that but i also cant say i understand that very well so idk

[cunning galleon]

Sakura Miko has no edge against the ones she's facing if it's regarding follower count

[slim thorn]

fair, I come at that from the comic book perspective which probably colors it

[bronze abyss]

id describe it as semi gritty because its a bit more grounded and definitely not very whimsical but also not really in the edge category

its an embark game,it cant by any means be truly gritty or whimsical,its both combined

[quiet swift]

from what little i've seen, it feels like almost post robot uprising apocalypse but it's still kinda happening, but the game is brighter/more colorful than a usual post apocalypse setting is, and not as bloody/gory

[bronze abyss]

yeah p much that though i wouldnt particularly describe it as colourful

[quiet swift]

It's more than brown and black and gray

[slim thorn]

E33 is the new bar for "colorful"

[bronze abyss]

it p much is brown and black and gray but with competent neutral colourgrading

[quiet swift]

Fair, i've not actually played it

[slim thorn]

I still haven't seen a single image of it so I'm just imagining stuff that vaguely fits what you're saying

[river veldt]

brouwn

im still imagining like

3d Adventure or something idk

[bronze abyss]

this random google image i found pretty well illustrates how most of the game looks like

[bronze abyss]

just...not shit res

[quiet swift]

I dunno, this feels more colorful to me than the average post apocalypse game 😛

[river veldt]

reminds me of fallout

[bronze abyss]

kiiinda but its still mostly just brown and grey

[slim thorn]

I feel like Fallout had a bit more color

[bronze abyss]

just not overwhelmed by post processing,rather it coming from the actual environment*

[slim thorn]

#Dispatch: decisions, decisions...

[bronze abyss]

what genre of game is it? ive had some interest in playing it but not sure what to expect

[slim thorn]

primarily, it's a Telltale-style narrative choice game

[random steppe]

Telltale style story with a side of managment where you send a cast of heroes to solve situations

[slim thorn]

with sequences of a superhero management minigame in between the regular story stuff

[random steppe]

I still have to go forward with it, I will have some time tomorrow evening

So far, the writing is top notch

Which is really what you want to hear for that kind of game, since the writing is most of the drive to play it

[mossy flume]

type type typing on Discord
pause

I can’t read the words or letters anymore. Um. Well that’s distressing-
oh. Right. Halos. I get those now. The doctor person mentioned that might happen. Migraines are weird.
Anyway. Now that I can see again…

[mossy flume]

Yeah, Arc Raiders has the whole cassette retro-futuristic aesthetic going for it much like Star Wars or Blade Runner do

[mossy flume]

Choose the funny option

[river veldt]

||YOU CUT COUPE OVER SONAR ????||

[mossy flume]

As mentioned, it’s a Telltale-style multiple choice narrative game. It was originally written as a Netflix TV show, but it became a game instead

So there’s a lot of “this could’ve been a TV show” going on. It’s pretty great though.

[quiet swift]

Other way around, I'd love to see Wolf Among Us as a (well done/good budget) tv series

[bronze abyss]

man i need to play that game so bad i loved telltale twd alot and it being concluded left me with a hole that may be temporarily fixable with that game but i keep gettinf distracted by other series

especially now that multiple of my peak priority games have/are/soon will release

[mossy flume]

Unrelated, but I was just sent this and figured y’all would get a kick out of it

[bronze abyss]

ADIDAS

why the squint its THE hornet line of all time

[teal sonnet]

Honestly, if Clair Obscur combat style is not your thing or is too hard

Watch a streamer play it, for the story

The story of this game is one of the best fiction things I ever seen

and the music

The music is masterpiece

[quiet swift]

Yep. And you can either go for the ones with visible streamer for the reactions to key moments, or there's a few where they're completely silent

[cerulean herald]

yeah the "full gameplay - no commentary"

[mossy flume]

https://bsky.app/profile/eurogamer.bsky.social/post/3m5uichw24m2u

Eurogamer (@eurogamer.bsky.social)

Sony has issued a number of DMCA notices against a fan project working to bring Concord back to life. bit.ly/49lr0V7

Bluesky · Nov 18, 2025, 12:30 AM

The question here is why would anyone bother?

[arctic fern]

It might be a financial black hole but its OUR financial black hole

[green fulcrum]

This has to be the dumbest, most ridiculous thing I've read all year (which is impressive given how fucking dumb this whole year has been)

[slim thorn]

#Dispatch (Episode 8): flawless victory

[rancid herald]

the year's not over bro!!! don't tempt fate like that!!!!!!!

[river veldt]

im not sure what the deal with concord is besides it failed

[rancid herald]

I'm not sure either

I think it was just a rather boring game that had been made a dozen times before and the character designs weren't great

[slim thorn]

it's kinda become the poster child for the current tendency of games companies to go all-in on live service things because even if most of them bomb, the one that wins big pays for all the bombs and then some

presumably because Concord had an unusually huge budget and an unusually uninteresting product to show for it, flopping hard even by live service bomb standards

[mossy flume]

Basically it was a gigantic financial bet they made. Seriously; they invested a LOT of money into it.

But the problem is that it was not doing anything novel and it was attempting to shove itself into an already oversaturated market (extraction shooters). Their problem is that they didn’t do any actual market research.

And it instantly failed when it launched. So they shut it down very quickly.

Basically it was trying to compete with Overwatch in a time when everyone was doing that. And they did nothing to try to make themselves distinct.

[arctic fern]

It was, at best, a bland game.
Its a hero shooter but the hero designs were either bland or confusing, or both
Its competing with a lot of games that were successful before the game went into development and remained successful after it stopped selling
They invested far too much money into it

[mossy flume]

It is indeed an example of gamedev being performed purely from a business perspective and ignoring your studio’s inputs on the project.

I’m pretty sure they also admitted to not really doing much playtesting either

[arctic fern]

https://youtu.be/ZGidbPEP0Jw there are a lot of vids on the topic but I like this one https://youtu.be/ZGidbPEP0Jw

[quiet swift]

It had nothing really distinct about itself that grabbed any attention of players, gameplay or setting wise. I think they were trying for high realism graphics but that wasn't a selling point

It was also trying very hard to characterize itself in a guardians of the galaxy setting but that also didn't really get eyes on them

The secret level episode about it was better than the entire game

[mossy flume]

https://bskyx.app/profile/gomizone.bsky.social/post/3m5nehdxgj227

This ad is cursed

Make it stop

[quiet swift]

[frozen gate]

why's he crab-clawing it

[dense crypt]

its either gonna be hollow knight or clair obscur.

[green fulcrum]

[mossy flume]

Apparently E33 is the most nominated Game Awards game ever

[green fulcrum]

Yeah, there's no way it isn't winning this year. If it doesn't, I will call soooooo much foul.

The only one that could maybe challenge it is Silksong.

[quiet swift]

It is though it's kinda using a loophole, of having 3 'best performance' entries counting as separate ones even though only one performance can win

[cunning galleon]

I'm now a real survivor

Clearing the path to muldraugh so i can clear and loot the town

[green fulcrum]

So very...whee?

[sacred grove]

Watched just the opening to Dispatch. Man, real-time 2D-like animation has gotten so good

[arctic fern]

Dispatch is unironically pretty fucking great

[slim thorn]

yeah I might have to do a 2nd playthrough this/next weekend

[worthy rose]

https://www.polygon.com/planet-centauri-steam-machine-announcement-valve-daily-deal-sale/

Oof. Screwed by steam twice

[slim thorn]

is there any day they could've announced it where it wouldn't have smothered someone?

[teal sonnet]

12x is wild af

Deserved.

It is only one of the best games I ever played in my life

[worthy rose]

Probably not, but they first got screwed over by steam when the wishlist and other systems bugged for that game

They got offered a feature day but then steam machines got announced on the day the devs randomly chose

[teal sonnet]

and these mf started from here

To 12 nominations and very likely winning

[cunning galleon]

I feel like commander zhukov in that one scene

https://youtu.be/-ea2-kt8ox4?si=0v2pVTo4hL6tAUxd

[wind stump]

I've decided that Nintendo fans can't have valid opinions, because they're either children, or people who fucking hate Nintendo... But keep buying their games anyway. (Big /s)

[wind stump]

looks at YouTube feed
4 videos on the Analogue 3D within minutes of each other

Hmmm, what a coincidence and not smells of embargo at all

[mossy flume]

Jeez. That’s insane

[mossy flume]

https://www.theverge.com/games/822849/analogue-3d-review-n64

Analogue 3D reviews have landed and units started shipping today.

tldr, it's damn good. Sticking point: Flash cartridges are problematic right now, but firmware updates for Analogue and corresponding flash carts might fix this.

Some flash carts work, but a lot don't.

One YouTuber found a few rare crashes with obscure games, but I imagine that'll be fixed with firmware updates too.

Otherwise their claim of 100% compatibility seems to be holding up.

[wind stump]

i hear that at lesat "legit" cartridges have a 100% success rate

lesat

[mossy flume]

Yeah. Nobody has found any issues in that regard yet, same with accessories

Just some rare runtime crashes at worst, it seems

There's one YouTuber I follow who was very vocal about their skepticism that Analogue could ever achieve 100% compatibility and specifically asserted he would prove them wrong, and even he (very subtly and "blink and you'll miss it" quickly) admitted he was wrong.

[worthy rose]

[mossy flume]

Hm, that's fair

Yeah I would probably feel really icky about that if I had released a bunch of games before and I was put under that category

[wind stump]

Points for honesty.

[robust latch]

https://youtu.be/hgMAl0Rrhq4 lgr released a vid on it

[worthy rose]

Man, it has been a pretty crazy year for gaming hasn't it

[mossy flume]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a76z5nNJws

This guy does a teardown

[robust latch]

ooo nice

[mossy flume]

It has the Intel Cyclone 10 GX FPGA, 220,000 LEs

That is a monster FPGA

Twice as many logic elements as the MiSTer offers and 4x the LEs as the Analogue Pocket

[robust latch]

damn given how well the MiSTer does almost seems like overkill

[mossy flume]

Yeah. But the reviews I'm seeing have some people noting that it's clearly better than what MISTer can do.

[visual hill]

interlaced graphics look bad on the Analogue (maybe fixable with an update). Other than that, it seems to have turned out better than expected

I will still prefer emulation any day over this though, but that's just me

there is also a MISTer-based console coming out later, with a N64 core

[mossy flume]

I prefer hardware over emulation

[robust latch]

my biggest problem with using my orgional n64 is my controllers all have screwed thumbsticks

[mossy flume]

Ideally, I can get an original console and add HDMI mods to it, but failing that, a solid FPGA implementation is ideal for me

Thus why I have so many FPGA devices, haha

-# But fuck me, actually programming a FPGA is a nightmare x~x

[robust latch]

years ago i got a dev kit FPGA from a kickstarter I just wanted to experiemnt

and yeah FPGA programing is a next level of nuts

[mossy flume]

Yeah I picked one up a year ago

Gave up after a while XD

[robust latch]

https://www.adafruit.com/product/1553 - this was the one i backed the kickstarter for

i played aroudn with it for about a week but soo much of it went over my head and didnt have enough time in the end to play around

[mossy flume]

Ooo, I was considering the Mojo

But as far as I can tell you can't get it anywhere anymore

[robust latch]

i dont think it ended up being too great for people to work with

but it was a nice dev kit and one of the real early ones that was affordable

[mossy flume]

I do hope that the Analogue 3D will be more compatible with flash cartirdges before long. I was primarily hoping to just use my Everdrive X7 with it

I'd rather not break out my N64 carts if I don't have to

[robust latch]

i have about a dozen or so carts sitting in a box maybe one day il break them out again and play

[mossy flume]

Then again, the one YouTuber I've seen so far who tested an Everdrive had a very old hardware revision with an old firmware, whereas mine is current, so...

Hoping that makes a difference

[mossy flume]

Oh, this guy did it too, with a current one. Welp.

[robust latch]

i never got an everdrive for n64

i did have the HDD module for my ps2 back in the day and the boot CD to play games off the HDD

i wonder if the support not being there is to not run foul of nintendo

[mossy flume]

I suspect it's just a bug for the most part or a conflict with their new OS. Every Analogue device to date has worked with flash carts right out of the box, even if unofficially. Analogue doesn't make an effort to specifically support them, but most do. Some flash carts have needed their own firmware updates to work.

At least one flash cart works on the 3D, but most don't seem to. It may be with how Analogue's new OS works, it's unclear

Analogue's apparent response to this is basically "We don't make a specific effort to support them, just original hardware" while also loosely implying that it shouldn't be impossible.

So we'll see, I guess

[robust latch]

yep

[mossy flume]

It's odd though, because it implies Analogue is doing something funky with their FPGA implementation. If it was perfectly 1:1, they would work

[robust latch]

the video mentioned that the way the flash carts work is booting their own mini OS. and that would have to bypass the 3Ds os

[mossy flume]

Yeah

Flash carts on the Pocket and Duo do this too. While this does break Analogue's features like save states and game identification, they do nevertheless work.

[wind stump]

Average Coal LLC experience:

ZE FLAMENWERFER

[robust latch]

well it looks kinda cool. not something i would buy myself but i do love checking out the retro world

[mossy flume]

My GBA Everdrive on my Pocket, just loading a random game

Analogue devices are usually jailbroken super quickly though, so if all else fails, we can probably just load ROMs off of the SD card instead

(Then again, Analogue did say that they won't intentionally allow you to load your own cores on the 3D... for some reason... it is possible they're changing their posture starting with this console. Who knows.)

[visual hill]

I got the impression Analogue is specifically trying to make them not work due to fear of Nintendo's ire