Rynjin

Also, two-sided CDs have the exact same issues as what you mention for DVDs re: smudging and telling what's on them. They were probably just considered too annoying to deal with, and in the niche circumstances it would have maybe been useful as in the Phantasmagoria example, the publishers just really didn't want to experiment with the release of their already niche product.

The span of time where CDs were the main method of storing music and computer programs was also relatively short, all things considered. CDs were really only the most popular method of music storage for about a decade before the iPod killed them, and multi-CD game releases were pretty short as well before storage got better and people either started installing from the disc directly onto the PC or the data was crunched down to 2 CDs at most. Consoles were a longer holdout (I remember some games as late as the Gamecube era had multiple discs) but not by too much.

Innovation or improvement in an industry usually comes with time, and the time period where CDs were the most popular simply wasn't long enough for people to experiment that much, since the innovation came in with just...better, different technology instead of improving what we already had.

They certainly seemed that way after they were buffed in Heroes of the Storm.

While not LinkedIn exactly, I did receive one of the most unhinged messages I've ever seen from a  recruiter recently.

Quote

 

"I really appreciate your prompt response.

This is with the direct client with no implementation partner or layer in between.

Let me know how much the rate on W2 you are currently looking/targeting for in the market.

 

“For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

- Paul The Apostle"

 

The hardest part of the game IMO was the...green level I think? The one where it's all indoors, cramped little mossy spaces. Once you get over that hump you PROBABLY have a build that can just mow through things.

The rhythm is more important than you might think. Shoot on the beat, reload on the beat, and most importantly: DODGE on the beat.

The variety of enemies is pretty limited on each level, so after memorizing how they move and what they do, it's relatively easy to start clearing levels without taking any hits at all. I was never quite able to finish the game with the 1 HP guy, but I got pretty deep, and I don't even typically ATTEMPT no hit challenges in most games. I did also manage to beat the game on Hard with the "low health guy" (Njord, who has 50 HP and doesn't get to buy weapons) as well with a similar playstyle to what I'm suggesting.

Basically, focus on defense over speed for a while and you'll find the game getting a lot easier.

Note: I did START playing the game on Hard, so I kinda had to adopt a playstyle for a less forgiving game from the start. I'm not sure if enemies are slower or wonkier to dodge at lower difficulties, since slower can often be harder in a weird way in these types of games.

1 hour ago, Moby said:

Also, I am probably handcapping myself because I have no idea if the Fire/Poison variations of the bow and crossbow do more flat damage, since I had that uncommon. Why do you even have to research a new crossbow to fire the same arrow but on fire anyway?

 

It took me a while to learn that shields meant "equipable recharging FPS shields" and not "placeable shield domes"

Fire/Poison are status effects/debuffs that increase capture rate and deal DoT. I also think they deal the same damage baseline as the regular weapons so they're just better.

Also big same on the shields thing.

I haven't bothered much with upgraded weapons, there hasn't been a huge need for me since Pals do so much more damage than you anyway, and I have a big issue with too easily killing dudes I'm trying to catch anyway.

I thought it was pretty fun. I'm also gonna be honest, some of the complaints don't really track with my experience; I've never needed to repair a gun before I'm ready to craft the next gun anyway. Same with the food meter, which is automated anyway  with the feed bag. Honestly it sounds like you might have been playing on an online server where somebody tweaked a few values to make the game "more hardcore".

Armor repair sucks cock though, especially on hats.

3 hours ago, Moby said:

I actually never saw any gameplay of that game, all I know about it is the yellow helmet cover and that it was a "Halo killer".

Same, to the point I always remember it as "Hive" until someone mentions the actual game again.

The discourse around this game is hilarious to me because I bought it just because the trailers from a few years back made me laugh and it's only $30. Game is fun, it doesn't have to be that complicated lmao.

Final Fantasy XIV is a game my friend loves and I just...never got it. By the time I got through A Realm Reborn and then the, zero exaggeration on number of quests here TWO FUCKING HUNDRED GOD DAMN BULLSHIT UNSKIPPABLE PIECE OF SHIT SIDEQUESTS YOU'RE FORCED TO SLOG THROUGH TO GET TO Heavensward I was pretty checked out, and nothing about Heavensward was interesting enough to draw me back in.

I played a lotta games this year in part due to having a very high paying job for the first time in my life. Hope I can find another one lol.

In no particular order, games I remember playing and liking:

Remnant 2: Was amazing up until that last level. Earth is such a fucking slog, and the devs putting the unlock for a class (a popular class I really wanted to play) behind layers of obfuscation they later admitted the ONLY way to figure out was via data mining left a bad taste in my mouth. I've cooled down a bit but these two things mar an otherwise incredible experience, and whenever I play again I'll be using a save editor to unlock Archon because I'm not going through some dev trolling bullshit that requires at minimum two whole playthroughs to unlock even once you DO datamine that shit just to play the class I wanted to from the start of playthrough 1.

Battlebit: Very fun Battlefield-alike, I should really play more of it.

Warhammer 40k: Darktide: This technically came out December of last year but...eh. It wasn't really a game until October of this year. it still feels very limited and repetitive compared to Vermintide 2 (especially with Chaos Wastes in the mix) but the core gameplay loop is VERY strong. This is a game that is like a 6.5/10 now but could be better if they continue to improve, like all of Fatshark's games.

Baldur's Gate 3: Deserved all the hype. I am not in the slightest a fan of 5th Edition but this game is very good at taking the good and throwing away the bad. Gameplay-wise it's smoother than any CRPG ever made, it looks nice, and has enough changes form tabletop to make the game actually feel fun. Narratively, Resist path Dark Urge is one of the best stories I've played in gaming, especially with a certain romance. Remember: You can do this. Shadowheart believes in you.

The Finals: Easily the best new competitive FPS I've played in the past decade. Put in like 30 hours just in the open beta and it left me smacking my lips and scratching my arm for more in the month between then and actual release. 3v3v3 combat in fully destructible arenas never gets old. If they could figure out how to rebalance the game to keep it from becoming stagnant and do something about the cheaters, this could be an all-time legend of a game. As-is I fear it will be abandoned by a playerbase frustrated by rampant cheating (in ranked) and overtuned controller aim assist and dropped by the publisher.

Ghostwire: Tokyo: i think this game came out in 2021 but I got it from a Humble Bundle this year so eh. It's a middle of the road 7/10 game. Good enough but not good ENOUGH for me to finish it.

Hammerwatch II: A flawed but interesting sequel to the original Hammerwatch, which everybody and their grandmother was confused about and derided because it is not a sequel to the Roguelike spinoff Heroes of Hammerwatch, which is the game people...actually played. Hammerwatch is one of my favorite indie games of all time, very fond memories of it. Hammerwatch II is both more...and less. The open world concept is interesting, but leads to there just being a liiiitle too much walking in between each interesting thing. Probably could have stood to be a middle ground between Hammerwatch's extremely linear campaign and this, but I really appreciate the gumption in releasing a  2D isometric open world Gauntlet-alike in the year of our lord 2023.

Last Epoch: After the vast disappointment of Diablo 4 (which is all I will say about it here), this game was a breath of fresh air. Fun gameplay, looks nice for an indie ARPG, and tons of customization. it's all any game in this genre really needs. Big ups to the devs for releasing an unarmed build in an ARPG that doesn't suck cock. Any other time I've seen the "get these big bonuses if you have no weapon equipped" style fo ability in an ARPG it's been...suboptimal to say the least, but the Hand of Judgment fell upon my foes like the wrath of god and it felt GOOD.

Lethal Company: Extremely fun title I wish I had gotten to play more than one session of before it became impossible to assemble the crew again. Don't get all the hate. Yes it's popular, no that doesn't mean it's bad.

Lords of the Fallen: This game started off well and then fell off hard, but I have to give the devs credit for listening to players about what was annoying to them, and then listening to the counter-arguments of "hardcore" players who love the game as-is and finding a compromise that seems to work fro everybody. Moving all the annoying bullshit with extra-tenacious enemy mobs and such to New Game+ (where the hardcore players will be anyway) was a great choice. Enough changes like that to the good but flawed core gameplay loop and I might revisit this review next year.

Resident Evil 4 (Remake): RE4 is the one game in the franchise I have never been able to play. I couldn't buy my own games when I had a Gamecube or Playstation 2, and any time I tried to boot the fucker up on PC it had unplayable slowdowns apparent even from the first cutscene. RE4make follows the trend of taking an already amazing and beloved game (see: RE2, the de facto best of the series IMO) and making it look prettier and control less like ass, which is really all that was needed. I get the gripes about plot changes and "de-gonzofying" the game but...eh. It still has plenty of charm even without some of the goofiest bits. I loved playing this, with the actual only gripe I have being that Ada's voice actress SUCKS (and Wesker's is boring).

Starfield: My expectations were relatively low, but I expected it to be about as fun as Fallout 4. I.e. really good on a first playthrough but shows its flaws mostly on subsequent runs. Boy was I wrong. Bethesda has never released a more vapid and uninteresting game in terms of both narrative and gameplay. The nail in the coffin was the GOD DAMN LOADING SCREENS. So many, so close together, so LONG that I dropped the game fairly quickly.

Hogwarts Legacy: The last game I played on my old computer. It was fun enough, but my computer apparently couldn't handle the water physics around the lake where I saved at so any time I loaded it would just freeze lol. I didn't find it interesting enough to continue playing on my new computer, but it wasn't awful.

Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader: I did not expect much of this game. Not because I don't like Owlcat's CRPGs (I backed both of their other games on Kickstarter because I love Pathfinder) but because I'm not a huge 40k fan. But I'm surrounded by them and when they picked it up and started raving about it, I got it too. Is it as smooth and polished as Baldur's Gate 3? Hell no. Do I somehow still like it better? Yeah, though that may be recency bias as I'm still in the middle of it. It just feels really good to play, I think in large part because of how many options you have in combat. Somehow with only 4 starting classes it manages to feel more customizable and interesting than anything 5e's 12(?) can manage. And the sheer melodrama in the writing *mwah*. Beautiful.

Alan Wake 2: I was not a huge fan of the original Alan Wake, but I do like Remedy's other games, in particular Control. Alan Wake 2 fixes a lot of my issues with Alan Wake 1, largely by limiting the amount of time you have to actually be exposed to Alan Wake. Frankly, Saga Anderson is an INFINITELY better protagonist than Alan Wake is, and I had a blast playing as her. I haven't quite finished the game as of this review; I just got the message I was entering the point of no return endgame when I was sideswiped by how much I got sucked into Rogue Trader, but it was a good game overall. Good but...not necessarily fun. The narrative bits are great, exploring and solving puzzle sin the usual survival horro gameplay loop also great, the combat...it's Alan Wake 1 again. And Alan Wake 1's combat sucked ass. I get that it's a survival horror, and they're supposed to be clunky and have bad combat but god dammit this game's fights are annoying. Thankfully mandatory ones are relatively few and far between and otherwise you can employ the standard survival horror strat of just boogieing out any time a monster shows up. But for all that, in terms of narrative and just VIBES this game is the best game on this list by a wide margin, really rivaled only by the aforementioned Resist Durge at its best moments.

I think that's everything. Top spot is a toss-up between BG3 and Rogue Trader, which I would not have expected going into this year. I am not a huge CRPG guy. Honorable mentions to Alan Wake 2 which had easily the highest highs of any game on this list (shoutouts to the obligatory Remedy musical section, Herald of Darkness was fire, almost as good as Take Control)...but that gameplay man and Resident Evil 4 which was awesome but as a remake of an already awesome game gets bumped down the list a bit.

Best multiplayer game goes to The Finals and it's not even close.

4 hours ago, Idiot Cube said:

Remnant 2 good. except the final boss god that shit was frustrating

 

"Just turn the music off so you can hear the quiet ass soundcues." Genuinely one of the dumbest things I've seen in terms of advice for beating a boss lol.

16 hours ago, Huff said:

??????

Yeah that was a big WTF from me too. This has been one of the better years for gaming in a while. There have been both solid indie and AAA games in a wide variety of genres worth playing. I think I played more new games this year than any year in a long time, and not just because I wasn't broke for the first time in my life lol.

You could also play the "Vae Victis! HOO HA HOO! Vae Victis!" soundbite in someone's ears for 4 hours straight and get a similar effect, but this one is definitely more fun.

Pretty much captures why I never got into either show (BSG or Lost) back in the day. The formula works for about one season until you realize that you will never get satisfying answers to the questions asked by the series, only more and dumber questions.

Every time one of these images pops up I always think about how much I miss print gaming ads:

They just have a much different feel to them, and honestly do a much better job of actually selling the product than modern video ads. Like showing me the PS5 logo with a bunch of 1 second long clips of various games with no title attached to them doesn't sell me on the PS5, especially assuming I'm a random consumer who doesn't know what those games are already.

I think that might be it honestly; modern gaming advertisement just makes the assumption that everybody ALREADY KNOWS what their product is, so they have no reason to actually try to...sell it.

I've thought on a few separate occasions that I could probably do a better job translating stuff using Google Translate and an advanced knowledge of how natural phrasing is supposed to sound in English than a lot of professional localization teams.

Hubris? perhaps. But I couldn't do THAT much of a WORSE job if nothing else.

Quote

It's fun to meme on what they might come up for as "non-lame" translations though.  Here are some of my stabs at some other meme lines: ("standard" translation included for the non-weebs):

 

だが、断る! Lame: "But I refuse!" Hip: "You think I got time for what you're saying?"

 我がドイツの医学、薬学は世界一ィィィ!!! Lame: "German medical science is the greatest in the world!!!" Hip: "Yo, our health systems are off the hook, no cap!"

ザクとは違うのだよ、ザクとは!! Lame: "This is no Zaku boy, no Zaku!" Hip: "If you thought this dank robot was a Zaku then that's a big yikes!"

君を笑いに来た　Lame: "I came here to laugh at you." Hip: "People said that you were a clown, but you're the whole damned circus."

Nah, obviously the second line would simply be "Zat's German engineering! (Sponsored by Volkswagen)".

18 hours ago, Moby said:

I still find it funny that Pizza Tower was supposed to be a Clock Tower-style cartoon horror game.

Eh, Clock Tower has been the inspiration for a shocking number of random games in various genres, what's one more? Sure most of them stayed horror, but still essentially unrecognizable from their original inspiration.

I won't go full "every game after OoT was progressively worse" but they definitely did start getting more linear almost immediately. I personally think Majora's Mask and Wind Waker are BETTER GAMES overall, but they certainly have a critical path that must be followed in terms of the mandatory dungeons that OoT lacked. Though on the flipside I think that allowed them to design more interesting dungeons in terms of puzzles, since they could make the assumption you would have items from outside that dungeon (unlike OoT where aside from a few staple items like the bow, every puzzle is solved with the dungeon-specific item).

The series lost its way around Twilight Princess, where every game became built entirely around some inane gimmick instead of "the formula" as a whole.

Nice, so I can point and laugh NOW, saves me some time

Seriously though, the industry being fucked isn't the point, you're saying "I don't care about the workers in this industry", most of whom aren't responsible for "the industry being fucked" in the first place.

On 9/4/2023 at 4:53 PM, Gyokuyoutama said:

  I don't exactly like the executives, but I don't care at all if the writers get screwed over.  Let it all burn.

What industry do you work in so I can point and laugh in a few years when you start to get fucked too

I still have super fond memories of Heroes 4 but that is as far as I know an unpopular opinion among "real" HoMM fans. I still have the bigass instruction booklet in my desk drawer.

Most military shooters are some level of simulationist, but want to make some nods to game balance as well. They have a locked in balance point for how long they want a weapon to take to reload and it's one of the relatively common pivots for nerfing/buffing some kinds of weapons. I imagine it's a combination of too much work to keep up in a game that will be patched and an idea of like "why put in two reload speeds when we could just get it right the first time?"

On 6/21/2023 at 3:16 AM, Moby said:

The story wasn't as crazy as I expected, Rynjin kinda overhyped it. I mean, I expected nukes, but I'll take what I got.

It's crazy in the sense of "why are you doing this?" not "this is pretty gonzo". I just didn't think it was very good and never bothered to play past like Act 2.

It's also a no-win situation. Other countries (eg. Mexico) hate "The United States" as well on the grounds that their full country names also include a regional equivalent.

Foreigners can cry about it, I guess.