You were playing the game on a 4:3 monitor? Or is this a VR game?

I see. I am surprised they didn’t simply take existing open source code and go with that.

I am assuming you can re-sell the “Game Key”.

I am not in the market for a console (my last one was the Sega Mega Drive which was abandoned after we got a Pentium 1 PC and dialup), but I got to say, I love Nintendo’s pricing policy.

It’s almost as if they are taking the piss and want to see to what extent their fans are gluttons for punishment.

One possible complicating factor for those games? While they’re physical releases, they use Nintendo’s new Game-Key Card format, which attempts to split the difference between true physical copies of a game and download codes. Each cartridge includes a key for the game, but no actual game content—the game itself is downloaded to your system at first launch. But despite holding no game content, the key card must be inserted each time you launch the game, just like any other physical cartridge.

This is full on corporate regressiveness.

Nintendo will also use some Switch 2 Edition upgrades as a carrot to entice people to the more expensive $50-per-year tier of the Nintendo Switch Online service. The company has already announced that the upgrade packs for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom will be offered for free to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscribers. The list of extra benefits for that service now includes additional emulated consoles (Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64, and now Gamecube) and paid DLC for both Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8.

Wait so you have to subscribe to get access to emulators (which are all open source I am assuming)? And you can’t just buy a retro game (ala GOG) and play it to your heart’s content? You need a sub to Nintendo online?

No, I honestly never looked at fan theories or anything other than the game and the web series.

Will have to check it out and maybe do another run with a focus on the hints related to such theories.

Agreed, it does kill the vibe a bit. :/

I am right with you, Soma is easily a top 10 if not a top 5 gaming experience for me. And my top also includes games that I enjoy from a pure gameplay perspective (e.g. SimCity 4) which IMO aren’t comparable to Soma.

It was really well done, in the late game once I started figuring out what was going on I was like " Oh no, no, no! This can’t be happening!". A real sense of existential dread.

The ending was great too, a measure of positivity and hope, but very very far from a happy ending. A depressing ending with a possible ray of hope, depending on how one looks at it.

I just wish more people who aren’t into video games could experience Soma.

And the cool thing is that what Soma delivers cannot be done through a different medium. It has to be a video game, a book or even a movie wouldn’t really work in the same way. You have to be in control of your character.

Yeah, the Soma web series were incredibly good.

I have a confession to make, in the early parts of the game (before things got all psychedelic) I was almost a little bit disappointed due to my expectations from the web series, just a bit, the intro is also great.

There was something really unnerving about the web series. Even though there was nothing explicitly, it created a sense of dread, like something really wrong was going to happen.

They are the OG indie devs.

I still play Atom Zombie Smasher once in 3-4 years (you can get the mods off the dev’s website).

On one hand I agree, I was genuinely curious about the broader world and the lore when I was going through PATHOS-II.

But on the other hand, I almost feel the lack of clarity in many ways adds to the mystique and intensity of experience in Soma.

A key element of the narrative structure is that you don’t know what’s going when you arrive in PATHOS-II.

That being said the prequel videos were extremely good and got me excited for the full game.

Some background on Embracer.

Their piece of shit CEO, Lars Wingefors, was in discussion with a gulf national fund on a huge $2 billion investment.

He never got anything legally binding, but before securing the investment he went on a massive spending spree.

The national fund got cold feet and Wingefors had to cut up all of Embracer to account for his mistake.

You would think such a childish error would result in immediate dismissal and essentially a permanent blacklisting from executive positions (not only in the gaming industry).

Nothing like that happened, I believe the Embracer board is full of his friends and family. He just went with it.

This is the kind of stuff that shows that polemics around hard works and meritocracy are at least partially propaganda to keep the plebs in line.

Blendo games is a really unique developer.

I really liked Atom Zombie Smasher and Thirty Flights of Loving (even though it’s very short for some reason I found the experience to be unique).

Tried Quadrilateral Cowboy, I liked the setting and aesthetic, but I wish the gameplay was bit more varied. Have not tried Flotilla.

Skin Deep looks interesting.

Not sure how an animated series would work with Soma (the OG game has a clear beginning, middle and end), but I will agree with the subject of the article that Soma is a top 5 / top 10 best game of all time type experience.

Better late than never I guess.

More kitties!

I do like the visuals AC shadows. They are very satisfying and I say this as someone who is willing to tolerate even bad art (not just average) as long as the gamplay is good.

Unfortunately, a large number of russian citizens are supporters of genocidal imperialism.

The art is gorgeous in this game.

Love the 2.5D isometric view as well.

Might have to check this out when it gets released.

I do like the innovation attempted here

How is this innovation, though?

It’s a specific type of DRM/sharing scheme, but it’s not really innovative.

It turns into a surprise hentai game in the later levels 🤣

I don’t think in store location are paid.

I would guess they are algorithmic and something about the game purchase dynamics resulted in a positive feedback loop.

This applies to the two streamers mentioned as well.

They are both grifters and scoundrels. Elmo is much worse of course, but it’s not exactly much of an achievement if one is better than the most corrupt and degenerate American oligarch.

Cute kitty. 😀

This article/situation reeks of the damp, hot, pungent smell of degeneracy.

The handheld stops working if you don’t have an active subscription for stupidly expensive HP brand screen wipes. This is marketed as being part of their eyesight protection feature.

E.h. Snoop Dog the game would be shilling yourself out in every manner imaginable.

Yeah, it seems to be an indie hit.

I see. I still think claiming that Mario 64 and Zelda 98 are the foundation for most 3D action and adventure games doesn’t really align with reality.

Especially the piece about Mario 64 being the first 3D game were movement was fun. I understand that the definition of fun is subjective, but this is basically false.

Beyond Quake, in Frontier: First Encounters you could literally fly between solar bodies, do planetry landings, fly between cities. This is far more difficult to pull off well than the relatively primitive movement in Mario 64.

Same with setting the standard for player hubs. I haven’t played Mario 64, but I have seen friends play Mario Galaxy and the hub area in Galaxy is well designed, but simplistic and with no dynamism related to gameplay.

Not sure about how exactly target lock-on functions in Zelda 98, but target lock-on definitely existing long, long before Zelda and in more complex, dynamic environments.

Don’t get me wrong, you like what you like and clearly Mario 64 and Zelda 98 are good games, but it is strange to put them on the pedestal in this manner. Especially when many of your statements almost approach a PR level of what I assume is hyperbole (e.g. “first 3D game with fun movement” - this is clearly false).

The last console I had was the Sega Mega Drive, so I don’t have much knowledge of console games, but are you sure Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time “essentially set the foundations of 3D gaming that are still used today?”.

Quake 1, was released on June 1996. Quake II was released on December 1997.

Ocarina of Time was released on November 1998, the same time as Half-Life.

Sure, Mario 64 was released in June 1996, same time as Quake 1, but Quake 1 also had multiplayer - a key milestone for 3D gaming at that time).

You also had Frontier: First Encounters, released in April 1995, with primitive, but full 3D graphics:

Tomb Raider was released in October 1996 (Sega Saturn, DOS, PlayStation):

Mechwarrior II was released in July 1995:

I am just curious, is there something about Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time that I don’t know about with respect to their contribution to 3D gaming (either from a technical or game design perspective)? They are clearly great games, I just don’t really understand how they could be the foundation for all 3D gaming.

Bad Rats.

On a more serious note, my personal best of all time would be SimCity 3000.

Soma, TF2, Fallout 2, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Deus Ex, StarCraft: Brood War, Civ 5 would all be in the top 10 (in no particular order).

Does the PS3 version include the secret Michael Jackson easter egg for your bed?

I doubt too many people are getting the 5090 primarily for gaming.

Funny how this game has almost gotten a cult-like status. One that it wouldn’t have achieved if it was merely below average.

I’ve never heard of the game designer mentioned in the article or of Katamari, just wanted to mention that it must be nice having that kind of creative freedom.

His latest game doesn’t look like it’s for me, but the concept sounds original.

Pharaoh/Cleopatra includes somewhat detailed descriptions of life in ancient Egypt in context of the gameplay. You have a beer production chain; the game has a short outline of beer in ancient Egypt.

It has great gameplay too that stands the test of time.

Any recommendation for modding guide. I played it back in the day, but to be honest I stopped in one of the earlier levels because it got a bit unnerving.

Mostly looking for HD support, better textures/assets (but ones that jive with the vibe) and balance changes to make it a bit easier.

Agreed. I do add commentary in square brackets for such cases, but with this one I felt like I would have to almost change the whole title.

The funny thing is, my first computer from 1997 had a S3 ViRGE with 4MB VRAM, and the content creator is running HL2 with 8MB VRAM.

That’s definitely true. But I would argue every additional “unit” of graphical improvement is becoming more and more expensive to the point where the relative benefits associated with a single unified platform are not as impactful as they once were.

Growing costs of hardware components and relatively mild gen-on-gen improvements in visual quality are making the classical console business model (subsidized hardware used to drive game sales via exclusiveles) obsolete.

Can’t speak for the quality of Stadia and I am not in the target audience, but I thought it was crazy that people were willing to trust Google that they wouldn’t shut down the service if they didn’t immediately get 10 quadrillion subscribers.

I vividly remember some senior Google exec. getting all defensive on twitter about the jokes about Google shutting down new projects and implying that this wouldn’t be the case with Stadia.

Sure thing, bro!

I might be mistaken, but doesn’t HL2 RTX require a high end 5000 series GPU? I guess I should just try it out on my 3080 (with a 1440 screen) and see how it goes.