general gaming

[arctic fern]

in theory at least. we assumed electricity companies would reduce prices post covid, and yet...

[bitter stream]

that's a fair point lol. Those datacentres might just get repurposed into other things if they find some other tech to sell that can use the same hardware

and thus need more RAM and storage and power and water etc.

I recall reading about Samsung's Mobile division having to fight internally in the company to secure enough RAM for mobile phones so that they wouldn't have to buy outside the company

Profit margins are that good right now for selling to Datacentres

https://www.sammobile.com/news/rift-emerges-between-samsung-phone-memory-divisions/ source here if it's of interest to anyone

[hushed robin]

id send a meme but no meme allowed

its relevant however

[bitter stream]

I mean, I suppose you could just make the joke in writing instead?

[hushed robin]

idk, uh

3 small-headed, drooling soyjaks with surge protectors coming out of their heads, all plugged into the next in a clockwise triangle , one being NVIDIA, one being Oracle, and the last OpenAI. The cable from OpenAI to NVIDIA is labelled "$200bn deal to buy NVIDIA chips" and "$100bn investment into OpenAI", the cable from NVIDIA to Oracle is labelled "$40bn of NVIDIA chip purchases for OpenAI datacenters", and the cable from Oracle to OpenAI is labelled "$300bn deal for datacenters"

there

[bitter stream]

ah yeah, it's a circle lol

[icy crescent]

they say there's gonna be a huge competition between Cod and BF, meanwhile CoD intentionally throwing

[gaunt marten]

From a technical standpoint, it's not possible to distinguish all types of AI generated images from ones made solely by humans, but it is possible for a human to make art in such a way that it can't be mimicked by any existing tools. This art is typically unsuited for use in videogames.

[craggy vine]

The CMC show got a bit explosive

(Don't mind that I have a missing texture on a base game map, I have completely no idea why, I think it is just gone)

[wind stump]

validate game files

colorless be like

[craggy vine]

oh true can try that

[craggy vine]

Hey missing textures on mods is one thing, missing textures on base game models that you aren't even currently modding is a whole nother level of being messed up I swear

Though honestly I want to keep going until the game just literally won't work

I had one mod today causing base game surival maps to cause a 'download add-on' screen with a link that went to nothing

[wind stump]

BAIIIIIIIN

I'M MISSING MY TEXTUUUUUUUUURES

[gaunt marten]

Fun quest

You guys wanna help me figure it out? I have looked nothing up

This is some sort of clock or compass puzzle

The eight altars in the corners can be imbued, the sun statue in the center can be inspected:

The urns have some "Kohu Essence" and it can be used to imbue the altars. Imbuing altars at random damages me.

My companion, the prince, can translate one word at a time.

So translating the words on the altar, it reads Eight: four-ten

I can ask the prince to go to any altar, but I'm not sure why

[minor plover]

can the prince imbue the altars for you?

[gaunt marten]

He cannot. He can only translate and move.

I have experimentally asked him to move to the northernmost altar, then imbued the southernmost altar. That did damage to me as if I failed, but also gave a success message:

The statue now reads

That means Two: six-ten

So I have a hypothesis, given I got lucky and the first thing I tried worked

The altars are numbered, and the northern one is four, and the southern one is eight.

[minor plover]

the word translated as "ten" might also mean either you or the prince, like, one of you stands at the first number and the other stands at the second number

[gaunt marten]

That would make the western one two and the eastern one six

Yeah, let's try having the prince stand at two and me at six

[minor plover]

seems plausible

[gaunt marten]

Easy puzzle

Thanks for helping me think through it!

Next step: Seven: Five-ten

Ten seems irrelevant

Why is it here?

So with seven and five, the prince should be southeast and I should be northeast

Nope, that didn't work

Nor did swapping

Okay, what if I was right the first two times because it was symmetric, but this time I'm wrong because it starts from the right instead of the left?

Yes! It was clockwise starting from northeast

That's the puzzle

That was the sun puzzle. Now there's the moon puzzle.

Moving the prince to the north or south pressure plate seems to turn off the dark blue and light blue flames

On the sides there are old tools where I can grab a knife blade, cut old roots and then fletch them into kindlings

The old roots respawn, so it looks like I can fletch infinite amounts of kindling. The moon statue in the center allows me to place kindling

Offering 1 kindling punishes me as the statue rejects it. Offering 2 is a success

Offering 3 or 4 is a failure. 5 is a success. I have no idea what I'm doing

Oh, it's the number of braziers lit around the room

That puzzle didn't give me enough info to beat it without trial and error

[visual hill]

this actually did happen over here in 2024-2025

it's kind of temporary, it will go back up to 2023 pricing very soon since the price tends to naturally rise every year a little

relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm0PguJ4sDg

[astral steeple]

Holy

[visual hill]

link: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15360/The_Best_of_Volition_Bundle/

[fresh bane]

I dunno if anyone shared this earlier today but apparently E33 got stripped of its awards and disqualified at the Indie Game Awards because of the Gen AI usage

[visual hill]

for me, it would be €20.84 for all the Saints Row since I already have all the Red Factions

that said, I already have all Saints Row on other platforms, so I don't need it

[hushed robin]

so nobody wins

[visual hill]

(all gotten for free or through Prime Gaming)

[fresh bane]

Debut Indie game award went to ''Sorry We're Closed'' and Indie Game Of The Year went to ''Blue Prince'' instead

[hushed robin]

ah

[fresh bane]

It was a little unfair to even include E33 in that event at all but I guess even if it's higher quality than what one would expect from an indie, it's still an indie... there's just been so many good games this year, but with E33 there it was obvious none of the others had a chance

[river veldt]

Blue Prince is awesome

[worthy rose]

That kinda feels like the indie game awards caving in to the loud voices complaining. It's been said multiple times the gen Ai used was a placeholder thing that slipped through cracks and was replaced ASAP. Yet all the screeching is suggesting the entire game or the key components of it was AI gen.

Performative, that's a good word I'm seeing used regarding the disqualification

@green fulcrum https://turnbasedlovers.com/news/upcoming-turn-based-rpgs-and-strategy-games-of-december-2025/

[green fulcrum]

Wtf?

Ohhhh, Indie Game Awards

I thought you meant the ones it got at the Game Awards

[cerulean herald]

yeah I had that double take too

[mossy flume]

…seriously?
This is really fucking stupid.

[arctic fern]

Elaborate

[hushed robin]

the using Gen AI is more stupid imo

[mossy flume]

The discourse around generative AI has clearly reached the phase of hysteric delusion.

[arctic fern]

https://bsky.app/profile/insider-gaming.com/post/3magvjfyivs2d

Insider Gaming (@insider-gaming.com)

Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage

insider-gaming.com/indie-game-a...

-# Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage
Sandfall Interactive and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been stripped of its wins at The Indie Game Awards due to use of generative AI.

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796

Quotes

165

Bluesky · Dec 20, 2025, 7:04 PM

Not really

[hushed robin]

No, no not really

[arctic fern]

The rules state no AI
Wgen the award waa given, they said no AI was used
They had lied, so the award was stripped

Seems pretty clear cut to me

[mossy flume]

I could be wrong, but my understanding of the situation is that they used AI for early development and the final product does not contain AI generated assets.

[green fulcrum]

It unfortunately...did

[arctic fern]

It did

[mossy flume]

Did it?

[arctic fern]

They removed them, but they were there

[green fulcrum]

At launch, there was a post that had AI-generated posters of newspapers on it

It was replaced, but it was still there at launch

[mossy flume]

…okay?

[worthy rose]

The initial ai usage was found within 5 days of the release and patched out, it was a texture. We're what 8 months later? If it was nominated and won, that isn't because landfall applied for the award, these nominations are exterior. It's only NOW that people are being extra hysterical about gen ai that this award got removed

[mossy flume]

And?

[worthy rose]

Sandfall *

[fresh bane]

The only stupid part in this is that the AI usage in E33 was something people noticed months ago so someone clearly didn't do their job correctly when checking if any of the games nominated were confirmed to have any AI usage

[green fulcrum]

Ooooh, I thought it only got replaced now after the backlash

[fresh bane]

If it broke the rules it shouldn't have been part of the event on the first place

[worthy rose]

This

[mossy flume]

So, a placeholder was accidentally shipped and later removed once the error had been noticed.

And that’s a problem how?

[fickle garnet]

Beats me

[worthy rose]

Nope, it made news back then. But as MA said, its at a fever pitch NOW and removing the award feels like the award givers are caving in to the hysteria and trying to generate clicks

[mossy flume]

If this is somehow immoral, I’m sorry to say that just about every game you’ve ever played has done this.

[green fulcrum]

I guess I missed the original news then

[fresh bane]

The only problem is that it broke the rules of the event that's about it really

[arctic fern]

No im pretty sure that gen ai is new

[mossy flume]

Accidentally shipping placeholder assets that weren’t properly licensed is so wildly common.

[hushed robin]

DOOM 1993, DOOM II, and DOOM 3 more than likely did not use AI

nor did HL or Portal

Generative AI

Minecraft

[mossy flume]

This is the same as freaking out over “asset flips”

[arctic fern]

No portal used ai, how else did they get glados to participate
Smh

[mossy flume]

But nobody cared about that

[hushed robin]

Asset flips dont usually get nominated

[arctic fern]

No?

[fresh bane]

To be fair people do complain about asset flips too....

[mossy flume]

Where people commonly define asset flips as “assets you can buy or otherwise license online rather than make yourself”

[worthy rose]

Note the date

[arctic fern]

People do get mad about asset flips for one, fir two assets are (usually) legally bought and owned

[hushed robin]

But also theres an Energy Crisis that heavy use of Generative AI at any stage in development is exacerbating

[mossy flume]

“Legally bought and owned” is fuzzy in a lot of cases, and often not true in early development

Usually replaced by the time they ship

Occasionally they get through and they’re replaced when noticed

[arctic fern]

Either way its a completely different argument

[mossy flume]

Not at all

[arctic fern]

Only because you say so

[hushed robin]

Assets are Copyrightable, AI Generated Content isnt

[fresh bane]

I mean whether we argue about it it's not like they're gonna re-award E33 the awards now so it's kinda useless

they already took away the awards and made their stance clear, it's just wierd that nobody did their job better earlier

[mossy flume]

Indeed. I’m just annoyed at the lack of understanding of how anything works.

Would be nice if people would stop taking the blind assumption of believing they’re subject matter experts after reading a few hot takes on social media.

[worthy rose]

Indeed

[arctic fern]

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/openais-stargate-project-to-consume-up-to-40-percent-of-global-dram-output-inks-deal-with-samsung-and-sk-hynix-to-the-tune-of-up-to-900-000-wafers-per-month so anyway openAI wants to take 40% of the global dram supply

[rancid herald]

what about the global ewe supply

[hushed robin]

they can get a stargate now but i have to wait until the end of my gtnh run cmon

[worthy rose]

Topical

[toxic seal]

They can take 40% of d
eez nuts

[worthy rose]

Ah, and found this, regarding the interview they gave

[fresh bane]

God I just really hate that snobby attitude so many people have about this

''Heh, like it or not, kid.... this is here to stay.... so you can cry and stay in the ice age if you want to bud...! ''

so annoying

they like calling people luddites too as if we're all advocating for everything to go back to the fucking pre-industrial revolution state of things and not ''hey guys maybe we shouldn't endorse the completely unregulated use of this technology that has already proven to be quite a handful and gotten out of control in the span of like a year''

[hushed robin]

im watching 2 near-identical convos about concurrent tech in 2 servers lol

[arctic fern]

Im just fed up with AI being artificially forced into my entire life

[worthy rose]

Yes, people are being obnoxious about it, but they are also not wrong. There is likely for more undisclosed use of Ai in the tens of thousands of games released per year and In a lot of cases, you'd never tell because its either something that isn't player facing, or it was there and was replaced later on

Blame the fat cats with money for being blinded by greed, then

[arctic fern]

I do!

[rancid herald]

tbh I feel like the reaction from the indie awards is probably going to lead to the normalization of using genAI in game development more than anything else

[hushed robin]

that and the Tech Bro response to Steam reenforcing their stance on disclosing if AI is used in thr game makes me upset

[rancid herald]

Like, particularly as these tools become more and more common. Like I'm writing some shit in vscode and the program keeps essentially autocompleting everything I'm typing. A few days ago I saw a preview of a tool that's meant to retopo models using AI and so forth

[hushed robin]

Specifically the CEO of Epic Games iirc

here you go
https://www.theverge.com/news/831747/tim-sweeney-epic-ceo-steam-game-stores-made-with-ai

[hushed robin]

thats what i meant by this

tim pisses me off

[rancid herald]

that can't possibly be how tim sweeney looks

wait. tim? I thought he was todd

[worthy rose]

Ah, that. Yeah, Tim can be a dickhead

[arctic fern]

But im mad when people try to justify AI, or compare it to asset flipping, or call me a moron for not moving with the times
Because thats just stupid
Gen AI is a blight on everything it touches, sapping human creativity, electricity, water, driving up costs while providing minimal benefit, driving people out of work, making existing in this modern world harder in a thousand subtle ways every fucking day

[fresh bane]

I'm not even arguing against whether or not that's the reality we live in, I'm not really arguing anything at all here right now, I'm just complaining about these obnoxious people huffing their own farts thinking they're so much better than others because they accept AI without thinking twice about it believing that they're spearheading the advancement of society and calling everyone against it in any way shape or form a luddite, there's a lot of nuance to the conversation these people just refuse to acknowledge and their mightier than thou attitude pisses me off, regardless of whether what the reality we live in is

[worthy rose]

They do very much have nft and crypto bro energy

[visual hill]

it was the same with NFTs and "have fun staying poor"

[arctic fern]

I mentioned that earlier
Its all the same bubble
Same people, terminology, technology, focusing on the potential money...

[mossy flume]

That is indeed an asinine attitude to have

[mossy flume]

Yep, Tim Sweeney is… not great. Not a fan of his takes.

It makes sense for Steam to have that label.

[visual hill]

(attempted) stock manipulation is a thing

reminds me of accusations of people having stocks at Intel on hardware forums in the early 2010s 🙂 it was a really common insult

I don't know how often people actually owned Intel stock there, but still

[mossy flume]

Mhmm. Attempting to have nuanced conversations about something doesn’t necessarily imply you have a vested interest in that thing.

[hushed robin]

all helped (or not) by Covid

[arctic fern]

Ayup

[mossy flume]

??? I didn’t call you a moron, mate

[hushed robin]

i dont think they meant you specifically

and also its an or condition

[mossy flume]

Ah, alright

[mossy flume]

This also annoys me. The tech bro crowd never has any useful insights and only manages to make the discussion even more difficult.

[slim thorn]

the asinine extremes on both sides are so loud that it's difficult to even state a rational opinion without being mistaken for one of the extremes

[mossy flume]

Precisely.

Literally I can only actually express the surface levels of my opinions here and I shut up entirely in every other context except my telegram group because of that very problem.

[rancid herald]

so on to something completely different; is anyone familiar with extracting 3d models from games for 3d printing?

[slim thorn]

I do think it's very telling that "E33 got de-awarded for 'AI art' (when it only ever had one accidental AI placeholder for a few days)" generated hundreds of messages out here and literally hasn't been mentioned in the #1382143400975012030 thread

[visual hill]

3D models often have topology not designed for 3D printing, so you need to rework the model to make it friendly to that (e.g. make it manifold). There are ways to automate this but the result isn't quite ideal, you will need to do it manually most of the time

the extraction process itself depends on engine, whether files are encrypted (which is quite common these days, but usually easy to reverse)

[rancid herald]

for sure

[visual hill]

which game(s) are you looking into?

[rancid herald]

eve online

I got the model extracted and pulled into blender, but then it gets weird

[mossy flume]

I think it's also telling that nobody's really interested in discussing the deeper nuances and just get exasperated and angry when anyone tries.

Ohhh, printing the EVE ships would be really cool

[rancid herald]

for some reason it looks like every face is a separate piece of mesh within the object

I'm not sure why lol

[hasty patio]

It might actually be.

[rancid herald]

so I have the model and it looks fine
But each face of the mesh is a separate item within the object (or something like that)

if I merge by distance, though, I get these weird graphical bugs

Now, I'll grant you that this has nothing to do with actually printing the thing, but I wanted to hollow it out and add gears (if I ever did print this, I'd want the rings to rotate)

so it's a bit like... huh??? wtf???

[mossy flume]

https://github.com/Kyle-Cerniglia/EvE-3D-Printing This is an older repo, but it appears to have STL files of ships from the game going that far back.

https://gamemodels3d.com/games/eveonline/ And this site seems to let you download STL formatted files of ship models as well. (The download button is located at the bottom of their 3D viewer, apparently)

Might be handy

[rancid herald]

I'll see if the model they have is normal like

have to register lol

[mossy flume]

It didn't ask me to do that

Weird

Which ship are you looking for?

[rancid herald]

that one

[mossy flume]

What's the name of it?

[rancid herald]

sisters of eve odysseus

[mossy flume]

Oh it did ask for registration

Annoying

[rancid herald]

man there's a lot of non-manifold mesh in game models

they used to sell 3d printed models but they stopped like back in 2022

It always felt weird to me that ccp never figured out how to do more with eve online

it'd make a wicked rts

[mossy flume]

Indeed

They've attempted a few different spinoff projects and they've never really caught on. Their DUST 514 successor is their latest attempt.

[rancid herald]

yeah

[worthy rose]

And I didn't even know about the situation until it was mentioned here

[green fulcrum]

long, heavy sigh

I swear, if we end up losing Larian and Owlcat Games to obscurity because people chose to actually destroy them over this, I will be BEYOND pissed.

Real crime against art is being performed every day by megacorps, tech bros, billionaires, and corporations like Microsoft, Oracle, Palantir, and more, yet for some reason everyone insists on not taking up those major battles and instead blame and tear down the people making the art. Those are the people you should be fighting, the people who are actually destroying the planet.

I. Hate. AI. But this is a nothingburger.

[mossy flume]

Yep. That’s what’s really driving me up the wall: The hypocrisy of the manufactured outrage.

[cunning galleon]

Zomboid gameplan for today, go into town and get a better car than a taxi

[craggy vine]

I wonder if Project Zomboid has a never ending hoard mod

Something about an excessive amount of never ending zombies is just so appealing to me

[cunning galleon]

I mean, they're already never ending

Just live on extreme population with occasional helicopter event

[craggy vine]

hm true

I more imagine like, every single zombie sprints towards you in mass. Like a whole tsunami of zombies

[cunning galleon]

Ye there's mods for that but it's kinda impossible to beat if they all know where you are at all times

You're underestimating the zomboids

Especially if they're sprinters

You get tired, they don't

[arctic fern]

Yes, several

in fact theres some default scenarios that include an infinite hoard, you have 3 days, last stand, last stand accumulator

[craggy vine]

Daamn I see

I gotta play project zomboid some more

Bet my sister would like it too

[cunning galleon]

I feel samurai

[cunning galleon]

Red frilly underpants and a corset

I'm going to replace the American flag in the files

[arctic fern]

you can get flag mods

[arctic fern]

42 unstable multiplayer just came out, but im also always down for a game, i love zomboid but find it best when playing with people

[craggy vine]

I remember trying it some time ago and kinda giving up cause I couldn't get anything done before dying

[arctic fern]

which is why i prefer co-op lol

[cunning galleon]

Sure, don't know when I'll be available

[craggy vine]

I could always play it with you guys but I'll have the issue of the times I can play being kinda random

[cunning galleon]

Same, i don't have a pc so i just go to a computer cafe

Well.. I can join non-steam servers

I play on my phone

[craggy vine]

ooh interesting I see

I do have my rog ally though so kinda easy to join at random actually when I hate time

Also just looked through my storage usage on my rog ally and man, it really is absurd how much storage games use now. And I don't even mean just the big tripple A games, I mean small indie games as well, even simple ones.

Some are under 1gb which is nice, like The Pony Factory. But then Dusk by the same developer uses a whole 10gb, despite the game looking only slightly more detailed then Quake. Or Escape the Backrooms feeling not to complex but using over 20gb.

[cunning galleon]

Zomboid is only around 4 or 8

Despite there being tons of content

[craggy vine]

Yeaah, 2D games obviously use up a lot less

3D games though, man they are all just crazy big now

I remember thinking that 500gb in my laptop was amazing, now 1tb can feel like not much

[cunning galleon]

Zomboid is still pretty massive and kinda unoptimized

[craggy vine]

From when I did play it, the optimisaiton seemed perfectly fine, and I played it using a 2014 cpu

What is unoptimised is a game called Starbound. It is cpu intensive while only being able to use 1 core. You'll be going down to 30 fps with a few mods and be wondering why, only to realise that it has 1 cpu thread maxed out and nothing else.

Though there are also optimisation mods that fix that

[cunning galleon]

You haven't played it in b42 yet

[arctic fern]

b42 is unstable for a reason

[craggy vine]

Damn I see

I last played it back in 2021 I'm pretty sure

Maybe even 2020

[arctic fern]

the MP update for 42 only came out a week or two ago and it took them 3 days to release a new hotfix on a different branch as key features were utterly borked

like foraging zones

[craggy vine]

damn I see

[arctic fern]

Its mostly functional atm

...mostly

Still fun tho

[quiet swift]

Man, the control resonant trailer is making me want to replay Control

[cunning galleon]

It's fun but still pretty buggy.. Can't wait for build 43

[arctic fern]

in 2030

[glad girder]

I need to figure out how to get emulators and everything set up on my steam deck later. I downloaded Emudeck but I'm having trouble figuring out how to transfer files

and I have this weird issue managing ROMs where when I download them, I get zipped ROMs inside of zipped folders and I have to individually decompress each one and remove it from a folder? And it's a huge pain in the ass

[unreal idol]

I have the best parents aaaaa ;_;

[wind stump]

Nintendo Switch Squared

[mossy flume]

RAD

That’s awesome

Got in at the last second, too. Nintendo just discontinued the Switch 2 + Mario Kart World bundle

[rare dew]

Shiiiii

TWO Switches?

[mossy flume]

One for him and one for Denzy I bet

[rare dew]

Oh yeh valid

[mossy flume]

Epic haul

[rare dew]

Doy

[visual hill]

holy shit! two switches!

[unreal idol]

Ya mom said "do you have any idea how hard it was to keep quiet that we got two of them?"

[visual hill]

I got a Pro Controller 2 on the way here (for Godot testing), but no console

[unreal idol]

Ya one for me and one for denzy

They had to buy one from Best Buy and the other from Gamestop due to selling limitations of one per customer

[mossy flume]

Little detail you should probably know: For the maximum game performance, install the heaviest games on the internal memory. The internal SSD is much faster than the SD card, so in cases where you might want to minimize loading screens, take advantage of that

[unreal idol]

They always pull witchcraft like this at Christmas

Goodtoknow

[mossy flume]

I’ve moved games back and forth between the SD card and the SSD for that reason

[unreal idol]

Most of my games are physical, but ive got Master Duel and the retro games downloaded

[visual hill]

this is a reason I only use internal storage in devices when I can

[mossy flume]

Physical is the slowest medium, unfortunately

[visual hill]

my Legion Go 2 has a microSD slot but I have yet to use it

[unreal idol]

I grew up with PS1 games so this doesnt bother me

[mossy flume]

I wish Nintendo would let you install physical games and then just treat them as key cards so you could get the best of both worlds

Yeah that’s fair

It’s not that bad either way, but noticeable in some games

[unreal idol]

Yea

[mossy flume]

Just one of those “Good to know” things

[unreal idol]

Mine is set up and now I'm setting up Denzys

[mossy flume]

[unreal idol]

While he finishes his secret Santa thingus

[mossy flume]

squeaky toy noises

Hope you enjoy it

Pokémon Scarlet & Violet run better on it too, so that may be worth trying if you have those

[visual hill]

Switch 2 is mostly a backcompat machine right now, since there aren't a lot of exclusives yet

kind of like early PS5 to be fair (or worse, Xbox Series)

[mossy flume]

Yep. And several Switch 1 games just run better on it

[visual hill]

people forget a bit because very few players actually had a PS5 at launch, but most exclusives only launched 1 or 2 years into the console's lifespan

[mossy flume]

Yeah. For consoles with backwards compatibility that’s typically the case

[unreal idol]

Ya ive got a copy of violet sitting sealed in my room

[mossy flume]

And indeed just consoles in general. They tend to take a couple years before they have an appreciable library

[unreal idol]

We plan to drop $10 for the Botw and totk updates

Master Duel no longer plays like hot garbage!

[river veldt]

man im jealous lol

[unreal idol]

MA i got a Switch 2 question

I'm subbed to the higher tier NSO so I can get the Switch 2 updates for BOTK and TOTK for free

Do I just put in my Botw cart and go to the eshop?

Oh

[mossy flume]

Yeah, if you have NSO it should lbe automatically granted to you. You MIGHT need to go to the eShop to download the upgrade patch

Or that, yeah, it might send you straight to it from there

[rugged flax]

amiibo
Oh hey that reminds me
If there's any amiibo you want, lmk and I'll make clones and mail 'em to ya
Amiibo figures are such a ripoff, it's easier to just clone the NFC chips and I may happen to have a vast library of them

[mossy flume]

Could also pick up a Flipper Zero, there's a nice amiibo app for it

[unreal idol]

[river veldt]

but i like the figures

[mossy flume]

Same

I get the amiibos legit, but yeah, they're pretty pricey

[river veldt]

are they ? i havent collected amiibo in a while

[unreal idol]

I have a Ness amiibo sealed in my room

[mossy flume]

The Kirby Air Riders ones are $50 each, the most expensive and largest (and most complex) amiibo they've put out to date.

They're otherwise in the $20-$35 range now

[rugged flax]

$20-30 each for some plastic and an NFC tag

[mossy flume]

Prices have gone up from their initial $16 pricetags

[river veldt]

i remember when they were like 13 bucks where i am

[mossy flume]

Metroid Prime 4 amiibos are $30 and $40

[cerulean herald]

cap do u have the Steve amiibo

[unreal idol]

I'm just so happy and so grateful for my parents they didnt need to do this but they did anyway

[river veldt]

i wish

[mossy flume]

This is the norm now

[unreal idol]

I 100% expected them to be getting us a Switch 2 since we all knew how pricey they are

But I did not expect two

[river veldt]

who is Sylux

[rancid herald]

2 switch 2

2(Switch 2) = 2Switch 4

[unreal idol]

[mossy flume]

Sylux is another hunter. He first appeared in Metroid Prime: Hunters on the DS, and then again seen tracking Samus in a post-credits cutscene in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.
He's shown stealing Metroids from a Federation facility at the end of Federation Force on the 3DS. He's basically the main antagonist of the new storyarc in Metroid Prime 4.
He's a former Federation soldier with a deep hatred for the Federation and Samus in particular. Apparently a power-hungry individual. His actual identity and motivations are still unknown, though.

[river veldt]

i see

[mossy flume]

The Metroid series director claimed like ten years ago he had a plan for him and had his whole identity and storyarc worked out.

[unreal idol]

Jfc botw looks so goood

[visual hill]

BOTW is one of those games that will look good 10 years from now

[hushed onyx]

Like Homeworld did!

[mossy flume]

That’s one of those things where a good artistic style that’s not trying for realsim but instead an art direction gets you a lot more mileage.

Metroid Prime on the GameCube still looks surprisingly good to this day and that’s before the remaster. Same with Wind Waker.

[glad girder]

The remaster actually looks worse to me

[fresh bane]

I don't know if maybe the Switch 2 makes the game look a bit better, but artstyle conversation aside, there is an argument to be made about the actual quality of the assets in the game, and BOTW does have at certain times distractingly low quality assets

Luckily it's the kind you can ignore, and it's understandable considering it's a game that released on 2017 so it was probably being developed way before that, and for the Wii U which was considerably underpowered, even the Switch kind of was, but all I'm saying is you can tell

[slim thorn]

I look forward to games in my old age having 8k textures for every patch of grass I walk over

[fresh bane]

It doesn't bother me that much though, I still think MGSV looks incredible even if I can zoom into characters' fingers with my binoculars and see that they're all super low poly

Because when I'm actually playing the game I can't tell at all

[glad girder]

I kind of wonder what the far future of game development and asset production will look like

[mossy flume]

The remaster does do a few things that I’m… not happy about.
The Switch 1’s hardware makes dynamic lights expensive, so the remaster actually lost some light emissions and VFX from the original GameCube where it was cheap, almost free to do. For example, beam shots do not emit light spheres anymore in the remaster.

[fresh bane]

Hopefully not that different, especially considering people can barely afford high end computers now as it is

I know the trend with technology is that it's always advancing, but I've said this back in like 2018 and I still hold this opinion very strongly, we don't need to go further with graphics and visuals on games

[mossy flume]

The charge effects on the arm cannon are also greatly diminished

[fresh bane]

Like, seriously, we're fine right here, we have all the tools to experiment with various visual artstyles, it's literally fine as it is right now

[glad girder]

Like if we can figure out a way to generate gaussian splatting on the fly from models then in theory for a realistic game you might not need to ship 8k assets. But then you have to figure out how to make those things actually work for a game

[fresh bane]

I want to actually be able to play the games that come out, please

[mossy flume]

While overall it looks better IMO, they made a few tradeoffs due to performance constraints that makes the Prime 1 remaster lose a bit of what made its atmosphere so good

I do wish they weren’t forced to do that

Tablet hardware from 2013 strikes again

[fresh bane]

It's a fucking impressive 2013 tablet though

[mossy flume]

Yeah

[fresh bane]

They put Metroid Prime 4 on that thing

[mossy flume]

Yeah and I don’t get how

Same with the Prime 1 remaster as it is

Those games don’t look like they should run, let alone at a locked 60FPS

[glad girder]

Merciless optimization combined with good art direction and asset production

[mossy flume]

True

And very specific exploitation of what the hardware is good at

[glad girder]

I really need to start looking at how I can get a GBC, GBA, N64, and Gamecube for cheap

I might be able to bug my sister to give me the Wii since she took it

[mossy flume]

BotW and TotK also seem like they shouldn’t work on the Switch 1

[visual hill]

Realsim, that's a Doom mod actually. :p

[mossy flume]

Especially TotK

[visual hill]

oh, it's Reelism even

[mossy flume]

Snrk

[slim thorn]

fwiw, I agree in terms of the final quality and experience, but there is still a legit argument that if e.g. fully realtime lighting became practical, then an immense amount of dev time spent fine-tuning optimized lightmaps and whatnot would just go away, freeing up all that time for the creative work we actually care about

[fresh bane]

A Wii can do all that in one device

It's pretty ridiculous how much value you can get out of a Wii

[slim thorn]

whether getting there is worth all the costs is of course a completely reasonable question to answer "no" to

[glad girder]

You're right but I want to get link cables and connect hardware and experience the integration between the different consoles

[mossy flume]

A modded WiiU can, too

[visual hill]

yeah it's a problem on Cemu, hopefully the Switch 2 textures can be modded in eventually

[glad girder]

I want to play pokemon and transfer them into Pokemon Stadium and fight with those Pokemon

[hushed onyx]

Although even then in some games you might not want realistic real-time lighting, even if you could do it with reasonable performance on reasonable hardware.

[mossy flume]

That’s the problem with the NSO N64 on Switch… Stadium is sorta unplayable without that

[hushed onyx]

The example that springs to mind is horror games where you might want it to be darker than it realistically would be, for example.

[slim thorn]

my understanding is that at a technical level, most kinds of "unrealistic" lighting still use most of the same underlying processes as "realistic" lighting, i.e. that's a question of art direction rather than technical power

[glad girder]

I will never shut up about it but it's a horrifying missed opportunity that TPC has never made a way to transfer and battle with your Pokemon across all the different games available now

[visual hill]

yes, pretty much the same for the most part in terms of GPU utilization

[hushed onyx]

Though perhaps that could be done by tweaking the simulation code somewhat--I was reading an article the other day about a physicist who ended up working for Pixar where they did just that to support movies, making the simulation run unrealistic physics.

[slim thorn]

and the more dynamic/flexible those systems are, the easier it would be to experiment with different kind of "unrealism"

[mossy flume]

Yeah. They don’t do it due to metadata differences and changes with some underlying systems. But it is indeed a huge missed opportunity.

[glad girder]

Imagine if I could take my starter with me between Sword, Pokemon Home, Pokemon Sleep, that dumb MOBA, and other games Pokemon makes

[hushed onyx]

Hmmm, perhaps, I'm not nearly familiar enough with the technology to say anything one way or the other.

[glad girder]

I already have a GBA, I just need the other consoles. I'm thinking about getting a FPGBC from funnyplaying

[slim thorn]

it's ironic you mentioned horror games since my go-to example for games faking reflections when lighting engines couldn't handle it yet is that wall-size mirror in SH2

[hushed onyx]

Funnily enough, something that passed through my mind while thinking about that was specifically not having mirrors reflect things (for instance, vampires)

[slim thorn]

true, in current video games a missing reflection will always be assumed to be a technical limitation, not a symptom of vampirism

[mossy flume]

I was playing Luigi’s Mansion recently and it occurred to me that it has mirrors. And even one room where it has some sort of fake wall-sized mirror across the whole room. I wonder how they did those. The standard small mirrors seem to work differently than the giant wall mirror in that one room.

[slim thorn]

IIUC most big mirrors are traditionally faked by making a whole second room, with a player-like entity copying your movements

but I haven't played Luigi's Mansion

[mossy flume]

At least in Super Mario 64 they just duplicated the room and added an extra actor that replicated Mario’s movements and coordinates, and they just used a transparent wall to sell the effect

Yeah, it’s different in Luigi’s Mansion, it seems

But I could be wrong

[hushed onyx]

Cheaper to make a whole-ass second room than reflect light, smh 😛

[slim thorn]

yup, back when all lighting was static / pre-baked "lightmaps"

[mossy flume]

The large room’s mirror texture appears rather flattened and distorted, it’s rather odd

[arctic fern]

have you scanned a mirror with the gameboy horror?

[visual hill]

can you show a screenshot/video?

[mossy flume]

Yeah let me grab it

[mossy flume]

Yeah. The big room mirror doesn’t do the teleport function, though

[arctic fern]

does it not/ i dont recall anymore tbh, been too long

[mossy flume]

I wasn’t sure either, I tested it just now to confirm

Here they are, videos uploading

From the Switch 2 emulator

Big room doing some sort of render to texture, I think

Foyer mirror is probably a duplicated room

[fresh bane]

It creeps me out how much Luigi holding that gameboy looks like he's holding a smartphone and taking a selfie

It was like 2001 I don't even remember phones having built in cameras in them yet

[arctic fern]

the gameboy colour had a camera!

its weird that the gameboy horror didnt make use of it:

[visual hill]

it's wild that a first-party Nintendo game has a Gameboy Horror in it

considering how Nintendo is stringent with their brands

[slim thorn]

oh yeah, the big one is so much flatter only in gameboy mode, I agree it has to be that

[glad girder]

I'm transferring games to my steam deck!!

[glad girder]

okay localsend and kde connect are both being garbage

[gaunt marten]

syncthing fork

[glad girder]

retrying localsend first

yeah that's not going to work :c I hate the fact that I can't just plug in an SD card and put my stuff on it

Trying to set up syncthing feels like it really sucks

[visual hill]

Syncthing is definitely made by nerds for nerds

it's very good as a power user, but it has a relatively steep learning curve

[glad girder]

Syncthing just feels frustrating because it's nice to share game saves but it's terrible for transferring large files, at least for me

[visual hill]

it achieves decent speeds on my end, it all depends on your wifi. Ideally, you'll have one device that's always on and on Ethernet, so that it can synchronize files quickly to all devices without needing your PC to be up

(i.e. a NAS)

[glad girder]

Yeah I am at the point where I am just angry and need to put this down for tonight. Warpinator isn't working either

I'm having to manually connect and it won't accept my local IPv4 address for some reason

I just want to play gamecube, holy fucking shit

[unreal idol]

hugs rad

I'm sorry its giving you troubles

I know how it feels; constant controller problems because my actual N64 controller is an eldritch horror to my PC

[glad girder]

hugs

maybe there'll be an adapter at best buy to plug in my SD card reader or a USB drive I can get tomorrow

Exfat works and the SD card that already has my roms and bios files should already be formatted to that

But this stuff is why I want the actual consoles and hardware so bad. Fucking around with all of these settings and tools trying to get things to work keeps me from my games and it’s frustrating

[cunning galleon]

I'm gonna make the zomboids not scary by replacing all zombie sounds with Usada Pekora noises

And the jumpscare sound as another pekora noise

And entire bg of zomboid with pekora stream bg

[slender wolf]

Doom 3 has mirrors. But doom 3 uses a unique lighting system.

[hushed robin]

Doom 3 is also one of the less liked Dooms

[slender wolf]

I have a lot of USB drives with usb-c and usb-a, one at each end, these can just be plugged into the deck.

Via the usb-c port.

[visual hill]

it's why you often see people in these communities being like "setting things up is half the fun"

(and it's true for a lot of people, sometimes myself)

[slender wolf]

It's why it can be nice to get a retro handheld from friend that has preconfigured it for you if you don't like doing this, nice personalized gift

[visual hill]

that can be very helpful, yeah

[slender wolf]

The other dooms are mostly preferable imo

[hushed robin]

yuh

Ive played all but the Dark Ages

and Ancient Gods Part 2

[slender wolf]

I've played the first couple levels of dark ages and it's not as good as 2016 or eternal but combat is still very fun

Probably still a bit better then 3, depending on if you value 3's atmosphere. The combat in 3 is not very good

Dark ages has kind of weird vibes and doesn't feel too much like doom, but dodging projectiles and charging around arenas is fun.

[hushed robin]

Ill have to try it out sometime

[slender wolf]

Final doom is probably weaker then 3 , in the sense that tnt evilution kind of sucks, but final doom doesn't really count .

[hushed robin]

true

[visual hill]

Doom 64 is the real Doom 3. 😛

maybe PS1 Doom, even, but I would consider that Doom 2+. It adds Doom 2 enemies and weapons to Doom 1 maps, plus colored lighting

[slender wolf]

Tbh I really do like doom 3s atmosphere and opening. "The devil is real. I built his cage"

[hushed robin]

also true

Doom 3 was one of my favorite Stories

Execution wasnt all there though

[slender wolf]

The combat is mostly where it falls short, plus the levels looking a bit samey after a while.

Hell is the highlight since they mix up the level theming

Needed more levels like that with unique themes

Plus better weapon and enemy design

[hushed robin]

yeah

[river veldt]

real

[hushed robin]

and then the Doom movie

The Early 2000s were NOT good years for Doom

[slender wolf]

Then there was early 2010s where no games at all for like ten years

Even longer gap then the one between final doom or doom 64 and doom 3

Final doom was 1996, doom 64 was 97, doom 3 was 2004, so it was a eight year gap

Resurrection of evil (2005) to 2016 was eleven years

[hushed robin]

and then the other doom movie

and Eternal

[slender wolf]

Yeah, we've gotten a game every four or five years since 2016.

Plus dlcs

And they've been good games.

[hushed robin]

yeah

[cunning galleon]

My girly

[robust latch]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ9NWVIIQ2c

[gaunt marten]

https://www.tumblr.com/avephelis/797974603567890433

love wins

really good bit actually

-# #thank you autistic little girl #plza #pokemon legends za #pokemon #plza spoilers #legends za spoilers #<- just for that last image #it does go for 6 minutes. for the record. and it's unskippable.

▶ Play video

Tumblr · Oct 21, 2025, 12:51 AM

[wind stump]

i thought she was going to name off every Pokemon

[rancid herald]

this is great

[mossy flume]

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1302155902085763094/1452674630052610128/RDT_20251222_064841.mp4?ex=694aac2d&is=69495aad&hm=8af24d6ebb7c9980bcbb5942652b5848ed2a77f8d2b0ec3ebcc0f92be1abe1b7&

Mario if it was made by Activision or something

[unreal idol]

Lmao

[little badger]

Some Sad news https://www.gamespot.com/articles/cod-battlefield-boss-vince-zampella-dies-in-car-crash/1100-6537144/

[mossy flume]

Oh holy shit D:

That's horrible

[hushed robin]

:(

[little badger]

He made some of my favourite games.

[wind stump]

[little badger]

[static bluff]

[little badger]

A statement from Geoff

[quiet swift]

One of the few voices for decent gaming experiences at EA too. Pushing back against a lot of the garbage that was going around

[green fulcrum]

@gaunt marten

Art by Oranyaa_

[gaunt marten]

Hi this is my name

Oh yeah. Lots of people play the game on mobile, but it's not really a game that works with the core mobile game audience because it costs money

[hushed robin]

We remember browser games, the ones that were made when we played them just sucked

older ones rule

(im a 19 year old)

[visual hill]

what about Bowser games?

[rare dew]

Yes hello this is a personal attack

and I do not care for it

[visual hill]

I've had someone tell me "oh Trackmania, that's an old game" recently

[quiet swift]

[rare dew]

Here's a fact to make your knees hurt

By the commonly-accepted definition of the term, the Witcher 3 and Skyrim are both "vintage"

[slim thorn]

eh, those feel old to me already

Skyrim has been "one of those games everyone else played" for most of my gaming life

[gaunt marten]

They're retro but I only name games vintage if my grandparents could have played them when they were my age

[green fulcrum]

I haven't played it. Aside from its music, it doesn't interest me. Barely any color, and I don't like the ARPG subgenre.

[rare dew]

IIUC the most commonly-agreed definition declares any game over 10 years old "vintage"

or was it retro?

I forget x3 Either way, Skyrim is nearly 15 years old, The Witcher is over 10

[slim thorn]

I wasn't aware of any commonly-agreed definitions

[green fulcrum]

Soon we'll have "archaic".

And then "mythical".

And then "jurassic".

[cerulean herald]

how old does something need to be to be called "classic"

[visual hill]

some things that are only 12-13 year old already get called classic

[slim thorn]

well, sometimes a new release is described as an "instant classic"

E33 probably fits that bill, for example

[green fulcrum]

...Shiiiit, Sonic Forces is nearing 10 years old too. It was released in 2017.

Christ a-fuckin'-live, where has time gone???

[gaunt marten]

A game is retro if you have to go back to a discontinued console or device to play it

[green fulcrum]

I remember clearly when it was first announced

[visual hill]

I thought Forces was 2016

I just checked and it's late 2017, so 8 years old

[green fulcrum]

Nope, it was revealed in 2016

[visual hill]

I remember it for featuring an OC creator

[quiet swift]

I tried skyrim, gave it a solid 10 hours and i could not get over how ass the combat felt

[green fulcrum]

Back then it was called Project 2017

[slim thorn]

probably is the least bad definition we'll ever get, though this still gets weird with re-releases of both the hardware and software

[green fulcrum]

I just don't understand how time back then passed by so slowly and yet the past 7 years have just felt like one endless week. One year for a day.

[cerulean herald]

when youre older, time feels faster because, say 1 year for example, doesnt make up a majority of youre life, itll feel like forever to someone younger

5 years is half of a 10yo's life, but 5 years is a quarter of a 20yo's life, etc

[fresh bane]

sometimes I feel like maybe I was brought up differently because everytime I see these millenial vs gen z posts I always find myself remembering things millenials talk about, and I'm just 22, unless 22 is now somehow considered too old

to be honest though I kinda didn't even register I was older than 20 it still weirds me out

but like I was using diskettes as a kid and I used tapes and stuff

[mossy flume]

Still weirds me out and I'm hecking 33

[fresh bane]

that's not... that old....

[mossy flume]

33 doesn't feel real

[fresh bane]

DVDs aren't that old either...

[cerulean herald]

everywhere I go
I see that number...

[river veldt]

same but im 23

[mossy flume]

Oh is that why a bunch of trophies were delivered to my door...

[fresh bane]

the most luxurious thing I was doing as a kid was getting the chance to go to the cybercafe to get PS2 games, the PS3 is still this cool brand new console to me especially because I never actually got one or ever interacted with one and as a kid I remember always wanting one

but it was the PS2 for me

[cerulean herald]

unless 22 is now somehow considered too old

according to anime fans, yes
watch out, theyre gonna start calling you a hag now

[fresh bane]

I feel like there's a larger disparity between the older gen Zs and the youngest gen Zs than most people care to mention honestly

[slim thorn]

imagine being exactly 33 when E33 came out

[mossy flume]

[cerulean herald]

but what about turning 33 when E33 turns 33

[hushed robin]

Older Gen Z had Graduated when COVID hit, Younger Gen Z didnt

It hit during the crucial years for Social Development

and the Eldest could fuzzily remember 9/11

[fresh bane]

It's not even just covid, I graduated high school after covid and there's tons of things I find I don't really share with the youngest of gen Z especially all this internet culture and gaming stuff
like, again, I remember being a kid and still using diskettes, but I wouldn't be surprised if you asked a 13 year old what the save icon means and they wouldn't be able to tell you, and if what I keep reading is correct I don't even know if that same 13 year old would even know how to operate a computer any better than their 68 year old grandpa

[little badger]

I just seen the crash footage he was driving a SF 90 it’s really bad

[green fulcrum]

Huh...I've never thought about it this way before. That's quite insightful!

[static bluff]

Today I watched someone play UNDERTALE and they were extremely upset ||that killing a frog meant they couldn't achieve the true pacifist ending. Like, they were going on and on about how it's bad game design and so on. I was, like, "Oh, so the game subverted your expectations?" and that made them even more mad.|| AITA?

[river veldt]

NTA

[cerulean herald]

real ones do ||the genocide route first||

[hushed robin]

Fair, the Internet just isnt new anymore, its not small or niche either. Like everyone and their dog is online now, so things spread fast and are replaced just as quickly

[fresh bane]

I liked it better when it was all weirdos and nerds and outcasts on the internet mostly...

[hushed robin]

So many demographics are online from the Crackpots, the Elite, the Poor, and Normal

[mossy flume]

Yeah. Joyriding with excessive speed with his brand new 2026 Ferrari with a passenger in the mountains. Hit a wall. Neither survived.

[hushed robin]

but then I wouldnt be here :(

[little badger]

Did you see it?

[mossy flume]

No and I refuse to

[little badger]

I won’t share it as it’s pretty brutal

[mossy flume]

Yeah, it’s NSFL thing, not suitable for Manechat.

[slim thorn]

Nah, this is a silly reaction because Undertale ||also has a regular ending you're supposed to see first.|| No one is expected to know about this the first time around. That reaction only makes sense if they assumed a more "typical" game design where ||99% of the experience is identical for every playthrough, and right at the end you get a better cutscene if you did all the sidequests|| which is simply not how Undertale is structured.

[little badger]

I’m going to play some Titanfall in his honour

[hushed robin]

Who? Im not gonna look for it; but am curious

[mossy flume]

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/cod-battlefield-boss-vince-zampella-dies-in-car-crash/1100-6537144/

[hushed robin]

Oh this guy

[little badger]

I will warn you it’s a very bad crash so watch with caution

[hushed robin]

Yeah sucks hes gone

[hushed robin]

I said I wasnt looking for it, just who had perished /lh

[little badger]

Oh right.

I didn’t see that part

[hushed robin]

Were chill

[little badger]

So what’s everyone playing.

[green fulcrum]

NTA, divorce them, they're cheating on you.

[gaunt marten]

Depends, is it your house or theirs?

[cerulean herald]

not long ago I finished streaming Omori to a friend

[mossy flume]

A replay of Pokémon Emerald atm

[green fulcrum]

🎶 That's Omori~ 🎶

[visual hill]

Duke Nukem 3D's 5th episode (World Tour)

in Raze, not the Cursed Randy Edition

[little badger]

Oooh

[visual hill]

it looks quite good and runs very smooth, constant 500 FPS in 4K internal resolution (my monitor is in 1080p in 480 Hz mode, so this acts as supersampling)

[static bluff]

Thank you

[little badger]

Also. If anyone owns a 360 you need to sign into it before the 31ST as the clock won’t change otherwise. So it updates it

[mossy flume]

Eh? Any more info available on that?

[little badger]

I meant the clock

[visual hill]

on a modded Xbox, there's surely a workaround

[little badger]

As the console only goes up to 2025

[visual hill]

remember that a bad update is never that far away... 🙂

[gaunt marten]

That's incorrect advice

You can just sync any time you like and it'll still work

[little badger]

It only goes up to 2025 it doesn’t go past that but I’ll do mine anyway

[gaunt marten]

Generalkidd's advice is only relevant for people who use their Xbox 360 clock as their only clock

[little badger]

I don’t know it if that would affect achievement earn dates

[slim thorn]

honestly the better question is who told them ||there is a true pacifist ending|| this early in the experience

that's a rare case of a spoiler that actively misleads them without spoiling further context

[mossy flume]

Well I haven’t plugged in my 360s in… a long time

[little badger]

I wonder what update they currently have

[astral steeple]

I use my 360 occasionally ngl

Usually for the og xbox tony hawk games and 360 American wasteland and project 8 and proving ground

[hushed onyx]

IDK about you, but I found out about it on Wikipedia or TVTropes 😛

[fickle garnet]

I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3, trying to finish it, cuz I am close to the end

[random steppe]

Oh, playing a Tav or an origin character?

[fickle garnet]

Tav

[random steppe]

What kind of Tav?

[fickle garnet]

I am a dragonborn bard in the game

[random steppe]

Nice, how solid is Act 3 now?
I played the game to completion on release and Act 3 was a bit, fragile is the best way to put it

It was a bit too easy to break the game continuity

Due to bugs

[visual hill]

are there still BG3 patches planned?

[fickle garnet]

I haven't run into any bugs in act 3. It also runs very smooth on my pc

[random steppe]

Oh, awesome to know

[fickle garnet]

No, patch 8 was the last

[random steppe]

Yeah, they are done as far as they are concerned

[fickle garnet]

Patch 8 did add a new subclass for every class in the game. It also added photo mode

[random steppe]

I kinda want to do an evil playthorugh before Divinity comes out

Divinity is still far so I have plenty of time

[fickle garnet]

Yeah

[random steppe]

I also kinda want to try to ditch everyone and just go solo with pawns or whatever they are called, and see how well the game holds up as a one man narrative

Just out of curiosity

[fickle garnet]

I want to do a Dark Urge playthrough eventually, but I won't do that till I finish my current playthrough

[mossy flume]

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/cheaper-lower-capacity-switch-2-cartridges-could-mean-fewer-game-key-cards/

16GB and 32GB variants of Switch 2 game carts are rumored to be coming up for publishers, giving more options to them and potential opportunities to avoid using game key cards

But this has yet to be fully confirmed by Nintendo themselves

[cunning galleon]

I still feel nice for owning zomboid

[hushed robin]

ITS ALIVE (FINALLY)

[bitter stream]

what's this then?

[glad girder]

Well shit

[peak mesa]

R.I.P the creator of Call of Duty

[mossy flume]

Yeah, really tragic =(

Former head of Infinity Ward and was the current head of Respawn Entertainment

Had one hell of a resume

Real legend

[rugged flax]

one hell of a dude to lose
nice car too, 2026 Ferrari 296 GTS
but i hear of this happening far too often with people who get brand new Ferraris and other supercars
it apparently happened in an area known for this

[mossy flume]

Yeah

Got too enthusiastic about his new Ferrari

[cunning galleon]

This is way too common for new Ferrari drivers

[rugged flax]

Angeles Crest Highway in the San Gabriel Mountains north of LA

https://maps.app.goo.gl/5XdCwxJgLaMHLMz28

[cunning galleon]

jump inside trailer
15 zombies

Prime zomboid gameplay

[craggy vine]

Started thinking about low end graphics mods again and like, I remember seeing them everywhere for older tripple A games... Do they still exist for newer tripple A games? I'm sure they do, I have just had less of a need to look for them.

Low end graphics mods were also always hit or miss too, sometimes you made the game look significantly worse just to get like 5 more fps

Or 0 more fps if you weren't limited by gpu

Looked for one for doom the dark ages cause I was curious. There is one, with some graphical artifacts but that is expected. One guy went from 13 fps to 40 fps on an rtx 3050 at 1080p.

I was more thinking about it because of the steam deck. Because like, as games come out that you can't run on it well, you could always use mods to make them run well. You do that to keep your hardware for longer.

Even Stalker 2 has a performance mod. Can totally use it to run Stalker 2 on a steam deck.

[clear glacier]

do you guys like my l4d2?

[craggy vine]

I like this new hard rain

[clear glacier]

apparently this is a gas station i got told

[clear glacier]

um

[frozen gate]

that's a common graphical bug when loading out of a map

you just press esc

what map even is this

oh no yeah this is hard rain isnt it

[frozen gate]

that's the glass in the middle of the burger tank roof

and theres the ramp to leave the area when you start it

[hushed robin]

Electric Blast Furnace

[bitter stream]

oooh sounds fancy, what's it let you do that you couldn't do before?

also now i'm curious, is this modpack a heavy one? A friend has a modded MC server, but it needs 10 GB of ram to run, and that taxes my system fairly heavily

[hushed robin]

I can Process Materials with higher Melting Temps like Aluminium, Dark and Damascus Steels, or Gallium Arsenide; it is crucial for progression

And GregTech: New Horizons is big, its about 300 Mods, but I'm sure the length is more of a concern, being 8,000+ of content to 100% it

[bitter stream]

oh gosh, that's a lot of progression

how do people even finish it lol

8000 hours?

[hushed robin]

Usually they dont on the first run, they get to a point like Going to the Moon and stop

[hushed robin]

In High Voltage

Or getting to WetWare somewhere around Zero-Point

[bitter stream]

i don't know what you mean by these? are these like, tiers of progression or something?

what's the gameplay like anyway? find stuff, build stuff, craft better stuff, repeat?

[hushed robin]

Yeah, theres 13 (13.5 if we count Steam) tiers, from Tier 0 (Stone Age) to Tier 12 (Ultimate Mega Voltage) (no im not kidding).

The Gameplay can be grindy at times, but you can do many things outside of Factory building

[bitter stream]

Ah yeah. What's the draw for you in particular?

What makes you enjoy it?

[hushed robin]

I like Sciencey and Complicated stuff

[bitter stream]

fair enough

[wind stump]

finally i can play as a maid in a fighting game

[little badger]

007 game has been delayed by 2 months

[wind stump]

(Actual shop NPC)

[bitter stream]

hmm, I suppose that's a shame? but also good, hopefully it turns out well for the team.

[little badger]

Yeah. I am looking forward to it

[bitter stream]

fair enough! hope it comes out good

[visual hill]

maybe this delay was planned all along, but they wanted to avoid the GTA VI void

since GTA VI has been moved to late 2026, it's no longer a concern for them

[mossy flume]

May 27, 2026 for 007 game. Fair enough

Guess they just foresee needing a bit more polishing time

[slender wolf]

Never mind, that message was a day old

Average discord moment

[little badger]

I just hope the game is good. Since it will have some hitman elements in it.

[wind stump]

EXCUSE ME I BRING YOU A PERFECT EMERALD AND THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT FOR IT?

[wind stump]

https://youtu.be/96PajQHX3A8

[unreal idol]

I am oddly intrigued

[wind stump]

apparently this mod converts the SM64 levels into slide levels

like, literally take the iconic elements and make them work in a "slide" setting

so it's not clickbait in that sense!

[dense crypt]

Super MARY-oh!?

[quiet swift]

Har har. Was browsing twitter (yes, my mistake) for an occasional interesting gaming story. Came across someone complaining: "month long ban instead of getting simply silenced for “inappropriate communication”? weirdchamp company @BlizzardCS sorry for speaking at all ig???"

Blizzard replies: Penalties stack, length and severity are very dependent on previous like actions on an account.

A third person: ""You're not allowed to feel or express negative emotions or we will punish you more and more extremely until total exile from our game."
I miss when companies sold a product instead of dictating how you're allowed to feel or express yourself."

Which is one of the dumbest takes possible, so I clarify that the CS rep was stating that they've already been sanctioned for whatever insults they'd thrown about earlier. Third person goes on to talk about people being banned for saying "EZ", which is absolutely not the case. I know this because I was a CS rep myself for an MMO. Third person starts getting angrier and angrier in his replies and uses the default "do your research". At which point I stop replying as they're one of those who just exist to be angry.

Fourth person replies to them also trying to explain or just calling them out on the strawman argument. Third person starts calling people the R word. I put in a report, and within 5 minutes he got sanctioned

[minor plover]

gee, you think the sort of people claiming that they get unfair sanctions when they didn't do anything might actually unnecessarily escalate? SHOCKER

[slim thorn]

.q moon 141

[thorny cedar]

Message on the Moon, #141: I want to post the fucking gif
And I am going to
Cause it's fucking bullshit
So don't give me that fucking attitude

[minor plover]

"all I did was posted a gif and they banned me for no reason!!!"

[quiet swift]

The funniest part, other than their self-own in saying something sanctionable... this wasn't even the person who initially complained about getting banned. This was a completely unrelated person who just had the dumbest take, and escalated things madly when confronted with facts. To the point of getting said sanction himself

[minor plover]

yeah, people like that usually expose themselves pretty fast. They want to act like "the rules are just overbearing" but then they can't help but be a problem.

[craggy vine]

They are over🧸ing

[green fulcrum]

For a lot of them, they just want the excuse to use slurs and hurl insults without getting banned.

To which I say that they deserve to get banned.

[quiet swift]

https://www.dexerto.com/tiktok/tiktok-star-epic-gamer-grandma-dead-at-78-years-old-3297700/

[mossy flume]

[quiet swift]

I checked back later, he's still arguing with yet another new person. Has been more careful with insults, so I think he got a warning rather than a ban/suspension

[slim thorn]

sometimes the argument is the goal

[quiet swift]

Looking at his post history, pretty much. Seems to be on the more 'conservative' side of things, as expected

Anyway, enough of that. I had my laugh

[green fulcrum]

Naturally.

[craggy vine]

Gahhhh trying to install mods onto SteamOS is fucking hard

I'm just fighting tools that were made for windows only. And the hardest part is trying to get unity mod manager to see the steam folder

[cunning galleon]

Keiko died..

New girly

I stole police clothing from Westpoint PD

She's.. Deep in thought

[astral steeple]

The Calisto Protocol is free on EGS today

[random steppe]

thanks, will grab it

[quiet swift]

Damn, forgot it was daily and haven't been checking

Ah, haven't missed anything big then on the dailies

[quiet swift]

Though i already had callisto protocol when was it last free?

[wind stump]

hey, Paradise Killer and Bloodstained are good

(And i've heard good things about Sorry We're Closed)

(okay i haven't really gotten far in Paradise Killer, but the Aesthetic is Really Cool™)

https://youtube.com/shorts/TkgceBtQyT4?feature=share

[icy crescent]

i think it's the 3rd time it became free

[visual hill]

2 years ago IIRC, I think also on Christmas?

it didn't sell very well, it's more or less a better-looking third-person Doom 3

[frozen gate]

blood west was big to me

blood west's main voice is corvo's in d2 and the original garrett voice from thief

and bloodstained is great too, igavania with igarashi on it

[frozen gate]

so it's like wild west imsim complete with cryptids

[worthy rose]

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/features/this-is-the-best-video-game-music-of-2025-as-chosen-by-the-composers-behind-it/

[static bluff]

James Landino - Deltarune Chapters 3+4
nice

Oh they aren't even the only one

[river veldt]

i'd probably say that Deltarune is my favorite soundtrack of this year too

[cerulean herald]

same

[fresh bane]

in case nobody posted it yet

[gaunt marten]

#announcements

[uneven epoch]

#1155888464089329765

[arctic fern]

you know what? im gonna play the "its almost xmas" case right now in VC if anyone is interested

[gaunt marten]

Hell yeah, have fun

[teal sonnet]

this is peak

[wind stump]

no i'm pretty sure it's Unbeatable, not Peak

[quiet swift]

Huh. Sony just added E33 to PS plus premium.

[visual hill]

which game is that?

[craggy vine]

yayy

[bronze abyss]

im cracked at this fucking game 16 second crypt clear time in megabonk

with noelle of all characters

[craggy vine]

Really wish my parents acthally got my pokemon games on the ds now. I just borrowed the game cards from my friends.

[mossy flume]

HOT DAMN

I didn't know HGSS got so pricey

Glad I still have them and their boxes...

[craggy vine]

Yeah good

[clear glacier]

Pretty cool little game boy to me

[bitter stream]

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

modders go HAM

[astral steeple]

Disco Elysium - The Final Cut Is free on EGS

[visual hill]

in 10 minutes actually, I still see Callisto Protocol here

[wind stump]

Disco Elysium is free

as opposed to four

[random steppe]

One of the greatest games of all time

Awesome offering

[quiet swift]

Dangit. Already have it and completed it ages ago

[gaunt marten]

Unfortunately the developers of this game have put it on a 100% sale for Christmas which means you have to accept it https://store.steampowered.com/app/462960/Caveman_World_Mountains_of_Unga_Boonga/

Steam

Caveman World: Mountains of Unga Boonga

…

Price

$0.55

Recommendations

420

[slim thorn]

lol, I've never seen a "Yellow Markers: Reduced" option in a game before

[unreal idol]

I don't think ive played a game with yellow markers/paint before

[arctic fern]

good games can include them but make them feel natural

assassins creed i always felt did a pretty good job, white fabric stands out while feeling natural

[slim thorn]

I feel like yellow paint became a thing relatively recently, so if you don't play any AAAs it'd be easy to miss

personally I know it primarily from the RE remakes

[arctic fern]

yeah its really egregious in them

i get it... but there was a better method than yellow paint

[gaunt marten]

I stopped playing AAA games before the trend started

[dense crypt]

Only game I've played that has it is Borderlands 3

[slim thorn]

There's also a bunch of ways to do similar indicators without even pretending that it's in-universe real, like how the Sly Cooper games have the little sparkles on ledges/hooks/spires that your circle moves work on, or Mirror's Edge had "runner vision" making climbable objects turn bright red. I always liked those.

[arctic fern]

i do appreciate the trend of better accessibility and telegraphing in games but i wish it fit into the world better still

[slim thorn]

yeah I'm generally a fan of yellow paint because the alternative is the player wasting a lot of time licking walls to find out what's actually interactive (which is a far bigger immersion break because it takes way longer lol)

[wind stump]

is Stanley Parable a case of the yellow paint being used for good?

[slim thorn]

stanley parable is just completely unrelated, it doesn't use yellow paint to mark interactables

[wind stump]

ah, fair

[arctic fern]

i do remember taking a few tries to discover that boxes were destructible in RE4 on my first playthroughs
even longer to discover barrels were too
so i can see the point? but also, i didnt need to destroy them, it was just helpful, and when i figured it out, I figured it out

[slim thorn]

though if ultra deluxe had been made a decade later I'm sure it would've had a joke about it

the original RE4? because that was still in an era where you could kinda just see what was interactive by rendering differences

[arctic fern]

i think the adventure line came before the trend really became a thing?

[slim thorn]

it was loooooong before that, yeah, and the line isn't marking anything interactive so there's just no relation

[arctic fern]

now you pointed it out, damn it was predictive lol

[slim thorn]

AAA games only started to need "yellow paint" or a similar artificial visual indicator after graphics got so good that the player can't just look at stuff and tell what's a climbable ledge or breakable box

the closest thing I can think of in an actual game to what the adventure line actually is (not just its yellow-ness) would probably be how Dead Space lets you ask the game where to go next by having Isaac turn on a little holo-projector showing an in-universe line through the rooms to wherever you're meant to go; nobody complains about that because, well, in-universe

[arctic fern]

also its opt-in

[slim thorn]

true

[arctic fern]

thisi think is a big part of the yellow paint, its not opt-in

[slim thorn]

indeed

which is part of why I think it's interesting to see a "reduced" option for it

(ftr it's Still Wakes the Deep that I'm playing and just saw this option in)

[hushed onyx]

There’s also a spell in Skyrim (Clairvoyance) which likewise (briefly) shows a line indicating the path to the current quest marker.

But since the quest markers already existed (and are probably in effect what most people would think of if you urged them to think of an example of this in Skyrim), it tended not to be heavily used.

I think it might have been somewhat useful in multilevel areas where it could be difficult to find the level the quest marker was actually on.

[random steppe]

Tbh I do generally prefere yellow paint to "witcher vision" or whatever equivalent

When there is an alternative enahced senses vision you just tend to go through the whole game with that button pressed down

And it usually looks like ass

[river veldt]

i like detective mode in the Arkham games

[random steppe]

I don't like it at all

[river veldt]

explodes you for having a different opinion than me

[slim thorn]

I don't mind it in the Arkham games, but they are the go-to citation for "there's no reason not to have detective vision on 24/7", and it's true that this incentivizes not really looking at the environments which in general I do think is a problem worth thinking about how to avoid

[random steppe]

I would rather some yellow paint on some objects than most of the game being in black and white to highlight things, which is what ends up happening with "witcher senses"

[slim thorn]

(imagine if a game like E33 had the "detective vision problem")

[random steppe]

Ironically, that problem also started in Assassin's creed

At least I think it did

[slim thorn]

I think yellow paint specifically gets a bad rap because it's a case of the interactable marker trying to present as an in-universe thing, without a plausible in-universe explanation for it being so consistently present; it's far better than no marker but there have definitely been games (many cited already) that found an even better solution

[random steppe]

Eagle vision I think it was called

[slim thorn]

yeah

[random steppe]

My favorite is the way From does it, the negative is that a lot of players never even notice the game does it

[slim thorn]

I don't even know what you're referring to which may be proving your point

[random steppe]

Basically, in areas that are easy to get lost in, usually in from games you can see torches that dot the correct way

It's not always, but it's definitely on purpose

Problem with being too subtle is that it often doesn't solve the problem though

[slim thorn]

yeah that's definitely not present consistently enough to solve the problem

admittedly Fromsoft games are a special case where they probably don't want to fully solve "the problem" to begin with

[random steppe]

Yeah, and also being told the correct way doesn't even mena you want to go there in those games since in side areas there might be absurdly important upgrades

[river veldt]

Doom 2016 and Eternal use green lights to guide thhe player on the correct path (obv you can explore off it but still)

[slim thorn]

huh, I never noticed that

[river veldt]

yeah it's cool

[random steppe]

Me neither but to be fair, Doom 2016 has a pretty solid map to go along with it

[slim thorn]

probably because they already have Metroid Prime-style in-game maps that solve the problem even more thoroughly than any form of yellow paint could

[random steppe]

Huh, completely unrelated.

I like this: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2796640/The_Magus_Circle/

Steam

The Magus Circle

Become the ultimate mage of The Magus Circle by casting spells, not with the click of a button, but through your prowess in drawing the arcane sigils yourself. Unlock new magic, powers, and characters as you face the coming tide of mana-hungry monsters that seek to destroy the very magic we hold dear. Fear not defeat for if you fall in battle,…

Release Date

Coming soon

Wishlisting that one

[wind stump]

she's pretty

AND she's a bunny

[random steppe]

I was more struck by the spellcasting mechanic but all you said is also true and good.

[slim thorn]

oh yeah, big fan of being able to set "Yellow Markers" to "Reduced"

(the stuff that's still yellow on "Reduced" are things like ladders and door-locking wheels, where it's a lot easier to believe they would have been painted a different color, esp since it's not magically constrained to the ladders you need to use)

[craggy vine]

Modern games: Here is exactly what you do

Old games: Read the manual if you want a hint on how to play.

[slim thorn]

and it'll only have a hint for the obvious part you solved twenty minutes ago

[craggy vine]

Modern games are also all so easy to actually get through, so many older games have it be such a nightmare. Like, space invaders is fucking so hard

[gaunt marten]

Have you played Ocarina of Time?

[arctic fern]

this hurts

[slim thorn]

this feels like you haven't played very many "modern" games?

AAAs certainly skew that way but tons of indies are unafraid to be hard

[arctic fern]

there definitly were games that got better with telegraphing to the player what they need to do

[slim thorn]

and "Soulslikes" were a big deal precisely for bucking that trend (at least partly) even in the AA and maybe AAA space

[gaunt marten]

Speaking of hard games

Let's play Silksong

[craggy vine]

I was more thinking more of like older NES kinda games

[arctic fern]

NES games were hard to make you rent them more often from the game store

not entierly the reason but was part of it

[slim thorn]

yeah a lot of NES games are just not fun to play because of, well many issues, but lack of information (even with a manual) is one of the common ones

[gaunt marten]

NES games didn't have cartridge space for a tutorial

They would have overtutorialized if they could

[robust latch]

i loved the manuals with the NES games always soo detailed

[slim thorn]

obligatory Tunic mention

[craggy vine]

I haven't played a lot of really new games

[gaunt marten]

Zelda II has tons of overly specific advice that is completely unnecessary, but they couldn't have a system for it so they implemented it as NPC dialog

Nor a lot of really old games apparently

[hushed onyx]

I should probably play that game sometime.

(I just got a different game for Christmas and spent all of my entertainment budget, so not now...)

[gaunt marten]

Ever play Gauntlet? "Warrior needs food badly"

[craggy vine]

I haven't technically played that many games in general I think

[gaunt marten]

Games are fun! You might enjoy some

[river veldt]

im a weirdo and love old NES games

[slim thorn]

be sure to revive the thread if you do; Tunic's one of those games where hearing how someone else gets through it and when/how they figure things out will never get old for us veterans

[slim thorn]

any idea what you'd like to play?

[craggy vine]

Okay I do play plenty of games, I know what I like, but compared to you guys it wouldn't be much I'm sure

[slim thorn]

it's not a competition, we'd like to tell you about games you'd enjoy playing, but to be more useful than googling "best games" we need some context on what kinds of experiences you want out of a game

[river veldt]

have you played Zelda II Colorless

[craggy vine]

The games I have played the most are sorta around the 2000 to like 2020 sorta era. Only new game I have played recently is doom the dark ages. And before that just Cyberpunk, then rdr2 and doom eternal. Then idk maybe Payday 2

But then I haven't played much really old stuff cause, I mean I wasn't alive

[hushed onyx]

It's absolutely a competition, which you win by playing as many games as possible; therefore, I will buy all of the games, open them up, and then close them to play as many as possible as quickly as possible

[quiet swift]

Off the top of my head, I can think of Horizon as having yellow paint . I want to say the newer Tomb Raider games as well

Also while searching for that I came across this:

[slim thorn]

ok but what did you like, or dislike, or want more of, etc

[hushed onyx]

Did you play Doom 2016?

I kind of assume so if you played the more recent ones...

[craggy vine]

I haven't played doom 2016 yet

[hushed onyx]

[river veldt]

it's not as good as Eternal but it's really good

[craggy vine]

I have played Doom 1 and Doom 2 a lot though and sometimes the modern ones just make me wanna play those

[slim thorn]

I enjoyed 2016 more than Eternal, it seems to be personal preference

(haven't felt like TDA)

[gaunt marten]

Horror novel where space aliens train humans to follow yellow paint so they can guide them into a place where their flesh can be harvested

[craggy vine]

Doom 1 is probably my favourite game. And I think 2nd favourite is left 4 dead 2

[slim thorn]

so you prefer the classic Dooms to the modern Dooms? have you checked out any of the modern indie "boomer shooters" made in those styles?

[river veldt]

ooh good idea

[craggy vine]

Actually yes I have

I really really love Dusk, and many of that developer's other games like Iron Long and The Pony Factory

[river veldt]

fuck yeah i was about to recommend DUSK lol

[craggy vine]

Dusk takes so many things out of Doom I swear. Even has the super shotgun

[river veldt]

i'd also recommend Ultrakill, though it's not finished yet

[slim thorn]

they know their audience

[craggy vine]

Yee Ultrakill

But despite born way after it came out, I think I do prefer the older more simple games.

[proud warren]

Ultrakill dances the line between "really hard, but satisfying gameplay" and "wtf i'm playing a different genre now"

[river veldt]

i liked the Witness parody secret stage

[slim thorn]

tbf video games have enough history and variety now that, if one were to actually play a little bit of everything, statistically it's almost certain one would prefer the older entries in some genre or series, even if modern games were broadly better

[craggy vine]

Truee

But yeah I like boomer shooters. Also love the 4 player co op kinda shooter. And also horror games.

[slim thorn]

not to mention all the genres where the older games are the more complex ones (or where it's had time to zig-zag both ways)

(CRPG fans, that was your cue)

[river veldt]

it seems to me youve played all the best boomer shooters so im kind of out of recommendations for those lol

i mean i guess i could recommend Quake

[gaunt marten]

Crystal Project

[craggy vine]

Oh also I love train games. Like I am obsessed with derail valley sometimes

I grew up playing Trainz lots as a kid

I still got the original box for Trainz 2006

I wanna emulate some games on my rog ally

I wanna play streets of rage again

I had a sega megadrive collection disc for the ps3 and I loved it so much

[random steppe]

This sounds like an awesome twist for a game.
Spoiler for a relatively old game, click at your own risk
||Very Bioshock 1 kind of twist||

Actually

[slim thorn]

same braincell

I think that dates us but still

[random steppe]

I realised there is no way to spoil it

In any way I try I'm gonna spoil the game

So I just deleted it in dismay

[slim thorn]

eh, some spoilers you just have to accept that "it's a game" is the only meta info you can provide, and it's still a valid choice for others whether to click on that or not

[random steppe]

Ok I'll try it this way

[arctic fern]

Woukd you kindly spoiler this better?

[craggy vine]

Guy...
Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo?

[river veldt]

im a super nintendo guy

[arctic fern]

I have no stake in that battle
Both had great games

[slim thorn]

both were before my time, but I think I'm only familiar with the SNES greats

(Sonic didn't do much for me)

[river veldt]

never played Sonic ?

oh

[arctic fern]

Me either tbh

[river veldt]

sonic 1 is good but is easily the weakest of the classic games