This is an excellent point. An organisation the size of Sony is simply incapable of not attempting a live service hit as long as they have the resources to do so.

A smaller player can pursue a strategy where they gain profits from their (somewhat specialized) segement of the market. Sony lacks that flexibility due to their size.

Some indie games and AAA games from 10 years ago should be fine.

That being said, SSD costs are low enough these days that you should be able to play off an SSD.

Love for Sail is probably the pinnacle of the older LS releases.

Definitely worth checking out if the Leisure Suite Larry series seems appealing.

Zarya does look very interesting.

I don’t think Jacobs is a scammer like Chris Roberts with Store Citizen, but you got to agree the 12 year history of CU does not inspire confidence.

I say this as someone who enjoyed Darkfall and can’t stand pure themepark MMOs. I tried to get into DAOC, but the UI/UX is simply too old school for someone who hasn’t played it back in the day.

I never backed (I only back single player games on Kickstarter). Just wanted to share with others the saga of this 12 years in-development indie crowdfunded MMO.

As someone who doesn’t play on consoles, the first time I encountered Kingdom Hearts, I thought this was a satirical piece. As if the gaming site made up a fake game. Goofy, Donald Duck and the Final Fantasy fellow together sounded like a teen fanfic.

No disrespect intended. I am genuinely happy if KH brings entertainment to people. Just sharing my literal “first impression”.

I really like Gravity Bone, Atom Zombie Smasher and Thirty Flights of Loving.

I believe Jazzpunk is not made by Blendo Games. Cool experience if you are into these sort of games.

Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude features Larry’s nephew studying in University.

Agreed. Just at this point I think it’s fair to say that this policy is definitely not in effect.

It’s a comically bad experience.

I get it that it’s probably easier to setup a Discord server, than to run your own forum, but you can always get a managed solution or use reddit (I would prefer if Lemmy was used, but I am also realistic).

I really hope indie gamedevs start moving off Discord. Sometimes it’s the only source for finding help or reporting bugs.

I was wondering if this is the case due to the “first store label”, but I wasn’t abel to find a link to the Steam store page for the full game.

I guess I didn’t look well enough. :(

Tried out the demo in late 2024. I really like the concept. It didn’t feel like all those "[retail store type] simulator] UE5 asset flips that are all over Steam. It has it’s own visual style and IMO has more refined core gameplay mechanics. Sure, some of the gamplay is similar (and can be very addicting), but you can see that thought was put into the gameplay mechanics.

If the 1st person store simulator concept seems intriguing, but you are looking for something beyond a quick UE5 asset flip, I would recommend to check this out.

I am surprised that it was released for free. I briefly interacted with the dev in late 2024 and I was under the impression that there would be a commercial release in 1H 2025.

I would assume a publication like “Nintendo Life” will promote Nintendo irrespective of what the issue is.

And to my limited understanding, the people who buy/use Nintendo are either children (you are not going to tell them they have shit taste) or hardcore fanboys who on some level will defend any action by Nintendo no matter what.

Fascinating business model.

rental sales of CDs

CDs? What would you rent CDs for? The only thing I can think of is music and win 9x games.

The weird discount application and the sales taxes.

The sales tax always drove me nuts (and in total I loved in North America for a decade), I could never get it over it.

Where I live we just get an item list (with true cost per item) and a subtotal.

That’s a fucking wild bill if you are not from the US. One would almost think you are being scammed (I am talking about the deceptive structure of the bill, not the values).

I have yet to try the demo, but I believe with Entitled, it’s actually not the story. You have the standard “save the world/princess” narrative (their page describes this in an ironic way) which you can complete, but you also have a management/tycoon x lifesim hybrid:

The world of Entitled is a quirky mix of fantasy and real life. Modern economic themes blend with a medieval fantasy setting. One moment you’re delivering swords for the blacksmith, hoping someday you will own a sword of your own and become a proper hero. Shortly after, you pay taxes and attend lectures on supply and demand on the job market. All that to figure out what to actually do with your mediocre life.

I tried the demo (this was over a year ago, so much could have changed). Seemed solid, but a little bit average. The world was compelling and I was curious to learn more. Some unique mechanics were included.

In principle I agree with you, but it’s also a “chicken and egg” type problem. Many people aren’t going to switch to Lemmy if there isn’t a modicum of coverage for more specialized topics.

I think getting to somewhere beyond 100K MAU will have a transformative effective on activity in some more specialized communities.

I think the bigger deal is Lemmy/Threadiverse getting 100K MAU and seeing steady growth beyond that. We are currently at around ~50-55K MAU.

Subs are a deceptive metric, MAUs are far more important.

Those castle and pond shots are beautiful.

With the price of GPUs what they are, who risks messing around with new GPUs like that?

First few hours of both FO1 and FO2 are pretty rough. Lots of almost comical kiting and a bunch of tiring save scumming seem mandatory.

Combat in the mid to late game is fun though. You have hard encounters, but you also have the opportunity to be prepared.

Thanks for the write up.

I mostly agree. The combat is indeed terrible with both real-time and turn based. Turn based just feels off and pure real time is not viable. I play with real-time with pause.

I had the misfortune of playing as a technologist on my first playthrough in the early 2000s. It was really rough. Over time you can figure out strategies/approaches to make it easier, but I would argue many of them almost break the game.

I agree you need a measure of tolerance for retro gameplay/jankyness and honestly combat was subpar even for its time (Fallout 1/2 combat had many issues by modern standards, but it was definitely much more refined than in Arcanum).

What was your experience like? Interesting to hear from someone who tried it now as opposed to when it was released. I will add that it’s not merely a matter of nostalgia, but you also have a better grasp of the core gameplay and the general storyline beats if you’ve played it several times since release.

Did you get the HD patch?

I thought this was unique enough to share in [email protected]. 😆

They are on my “to play” list. :)

That’s a fair point. We did have Arcanum in 2001 and while it’s arguably legendary in CRPG circles, I don’t think it did all that well commercially.

The Black Isle version of Fallout 3 (Van Buren).

Bethesda’s version had expansive and impressive maps and visuals, but the writing and world-building were subpar compared to Fallout 1/2 and New Vegas.

Cheer!

My last playthrough was about a year ago, so I have time. :)

Dredge is really cool if you are looking for something a bit more casual, but with decent narrative and very strong world-building.

Jesus Christ, the DLC prices. They’re selling each additional ship for ~$50? Like, the game with all ships is ~$700? I mean, I know that DCS World and Il-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad use that model, but I can’t imagine that the ships function as differently from ship-to-ship as the combat aircraft in those games, bring as much additional gameplay.

It’s the Star Citizen model. Players should be happy they are not paying $400 for a concept art piece of a ship.

Might have to check this out when I do my next replay of Hl1/HL2 (I do them every 2-3 years).

Did not know about Dave the Diver releasing FOMO DLC, it’s been on my medium term wishlist, but I might just skip it. I have more then enough games to play.

It just doesn’t seem like that kind of game to do FOMO DLC.

Thanks for the update. Lots of interesting highlights.

It’s almost certainly not going to have much connection to the Marathon series beyond the name and general thematic direction.

I would love to be priced wrong.

Haven’t played the 2nd one, the first one is solid though. I did find the political simulation to be a bit inflexible, I think I disabled political impact on my runs.

“It has been over a quarter of a century since SimCity 3000 was released in 1999.”

First off, rude.

😜

I am glad I am not the only one who is still playing it somewhat regularly. :)