I honestly have no idea how I’d approach writing the script for a movie about Shadow of the Colossus. It’s one of the few games where the sense of discovery, wondering alone in a desolate landscape is such an integral part of the experience, that removing it and turning it into a movie would ruin the experience imho.

I’m not hating on the movie before it even releases, mind you. I’m just saying that I certainly wouldn’t know how to do it, and that it seems, to me, an odd pick. Would 100% watch it if it’s good.

It’s been almost twenty years and I still can’t find a game that gives me the same chills. I was hoping that they’d release a Medieval Remastered the same way they did for Rome Remastered, but it didn’t happen.

I hear that the 1212 mod for Attila Total War provides a more “up to date” experience for today’s standards (graphics, historical accuracy, AI, diplomacy). But I can’t fathom playing Medieval without Duke of Death.

Both the first game of 2024 and the last one was Medieval II: Total War.

Conquered the world with France at the start of the year, now doing the same with the Danes.

I’m just saying what they could do if they were willing to. Your argument was that:
A) Valve should not stop casinos from profiting off vulnerable people, because they have already made money off those people and it would somehow be unfair to stop now, which to me sounds ridiculous.
You are using this as an argumentation that the government should ban them instead of Valve, but the end tesult would be the same. The casinos would walk away with the money, and the victims would be left to cry over it.
B) Poor Valve could not compete with their competition if they didn’t have the money they are gaining from their gambling-adjacent market, which to me sounds even more ridiculous. When Epic attempted to pry open the market using one of the biggest and most successful games ever as a leverage, they largely failed because the Steam user base was too entrenched. Steam is literally printing money right now and they don’t need the CS skin money to compete with anyone.

It wouldn’t be his place to provide a solution if he was arguing that the practice is a problem and prehaps pushing for further study. It is his place because throughout the video, he tries to argue that solving the problem is not only possible, but easy - and yet, despite supposedly being easy, his best solution is to basically propose that the industry self-regulate. That is the main issue I have with this video.

He is not proposing that the entire industry must self-regulate and that it’s the only solution to the problem. He is saying that this specific instance, the CS skin market, could be solved by Valve taking a firm stance, which not only they are not doing, but are actually working against, such as them side-stepping the regulations imposed on them by the French government.

I’m all in for stricter regulations on gambling by government agencies, but that doesn’t mean that the people side-stepping those regulations aren’t to blame too. While they are not doing anything technically illegal, they are purposefully operating in a grey area to profit off vulnerable people.

And how would they do this without screwing over normal users and victums of the casinos in the process? They can’t get money from these casinos, nor collect casino records to redistribute scammed money. All they can do is disable trading or their marketplace, effectively seizing the poker chips (or metals balls, following Coffee’s pachinko comparison) but doing nothing about the money casinos have taken from victims nor preventing the casinos from either walking away or re-investing in a new casino. To prevent new ones from popping up, you could disable all trading and marketing, but now you’re punishing 132 million users for the acts of a couple thousand.

They can’t do anything about the money the casinos have already made, but can stop them by making further money. That happens pretty much all the time in every market.

They could, but A) this is just one game on their platform, and B) this would leave them directly competiting against those who don’t regulate themselves and can make and reinvest significantly more. This is exactly the situation that Coffee argued was systematic and needed to be adressed further up the chain previously.

A) The video is explicitly about Counter Strike and the gambling market surrounding that specific game; not the whole industry. I agree a more systemic approach (ie. on a government level) should be advisable, but until that day comes, Valve could put an end to this specific problem, which they are currently choosing to ignore because they are profiting from it instead;
B) Valve makes literally billions and can invest to their heart’s content. They are not a small indie dev.

Again, exactly like their competition. The recent talk of Balatro’s PEGI rating being a prime example, with the industry self-regulation body declaring that virtual slot machines and loot boxes aren’t gambling but featuring poker hands was.

Cool, their competition does it too. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

This is the problem I have with this video. Valve is being held to a different standard, and told to self-regulate while others in this very series are having blame redirected away from them because its unreasonable to expect them to self-regulate.

Valve literally created the market. If you take the bigger share of the profit, you also take the biggest share of the blame. Casinos are obviously bad, but they are ultimately leeching off the system that Valve put in place.

It’s not his place to provide a solution: he is a journalist exposing a problem. Do you have such expectations for all journalists talking about any topic?

When articles get shared about any other company using micro/macrotransactions, predatory tactics or gambling-related schemes, people’s consensus is unanimous, but when Valve is involved, suddenly people have double standards.

Valve is fairly tame for their direct involvement with lootboxes and is competiting directly against companies that use them far more agressively […] Ubisoft and EA have already been attempting to dislodge Steam for years, and its not because they think they can be more moral than Steam.

Valve could shut down the entire gambling market today and nothing would change to their market position. Steam is not the number one marketplace because of the skin market. They are leaving it as is because it nets them money. I don’t know how can you call Steam “fairly tame” when they are literally allowing multimillion dollar casinos to exist and operate without impunity. They sent a C&D to casinos and then washed their hands of the problem, because ultimately they don’t really care about shutting them down.

They could ban accounts linked to the casinos, but they don’t, because they profit from them. They could have some sort of account-level check to make sure that minors don’t spend their steam gift cards on CS skins (which, by the way, Coffezilla proposes at the end of the video) , but they’d rather use the gambling loophole of “akshually, it’s not gambling as defined by law”. Then they lie through their teeth by saying that they “don’t have any data” supporting the claim that the gambling aspect of the game has profited them by leading to more interest in their games, which is bullshit.

PC players, and Lemmy users in particular, have a huge double standard for Valve.

Because the term means nothing, really. It’s just a vehicle for hateful rhetoric, incorrectly applied to everything that they don’t like. Yet half the things they like would be considered “woke” by their standards if they were released today.

Considering how it went the last time… Lol

Considering that the standard PS5 is still selling for higher than its launch price 4 years later (despite still facing challenges building up an exclusive library to justify the cost), I’d say that people are just dumb and will pay any price to have their shiny gaming console.

The real reason they are doing all these remasters is so that they can delist the old game and sell it again with the PSN requirements.

Opposite for me. While I dislike DPP graphics, I fell in love with the clean aesthetic of HGSS and never warmed to the pixelated mess that is the 5th gen.

It’s been a while since I played those games, but I distinctly remember my younger self feeling bummed that all the nice touch screen interactions from 4th gen disappeared when BW released.

I haven’t played It Takes Two, but my sister and I really enjoyed playing through A Way Out together a few years ago. Fares and his studio really know what they are doing.

Instead of gradually lowering the prices, publishers tend to keep the original price and give it higher discounts as time goes on. People read it and think “wow, it’s 90% off! I can’t miss this deal!” and buy the game.

Not on steam, but I bought Haven and The Talos Principle 2 on GoG.

I already played Haven on GamePass a few years ago, but I wanted to own it because it’s very good (also to support the developers). As for Talos, I played the original twice and absolutely loved it, so I’m eager to play the sequel.

Spike Chunsoft also developed the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games and, fairly recently, the new Dragonball game that, as far as I know, got good reception.

Kinda lame that these developers will be locked to PS or (months after release) Steam with PSN Account.

EDIT: And according to comments from Reddit, Kadokawa is a huge corporation that also distributes anime, manga and light novels. This isn’t just about games.

Thank you so much for writing these posts! Don’t worry about slowing down a bit, I’m way more interested in quality instead of them just devolving into a boring streak of daily screenshots, and most importantly, it’s supposed to be fun for you in the first place! It shouldn’t feel like a job! You can’t write good reviews of games if you are not enjoying playing them in the first place, or you’re prevented from fully enjoying them by the rush of finding a new title for tomorrow’s post.

As for this one in particular, I’ve had it in my wishlist for quite a while. I’ve enjoyed most of Dontnod’s games and this one seems quite peculiar indeed. I heard a few divisive opinions on it, but you convinced me to give it a fair try.

I’m not a US citizen, but happy veteran day!

Isn’t it the same as with every other entertainment system? I grew up with a big brother and a little sister. We only had one PS1, later one X360. We could either play in co-op, or take turns. Sometimes my father would also play on the console, and we’d do something else in the meantime.

What’s different about the Switch? It’s an entertainment system. You insert the game, you play. I don’t have one, but I’m pretty sure it allows for different accounts to be created and each have their own save file, so there’s no need to buy multiple consoles/multiple copies of the same game. You can either play on the go, or hook it to the TV and play with the bigger screen. You are not forced to play party games just because you have a bigger screen, and you are not forced to treat it like a “personal device” just because you are playing on the smaller screen (I also despise the idea of “personal device” for kids: learning to share games is a very important lesson for kids).

I’m pretty sure they were doing that already.

Just give me a proper Xenogears remake with all the cut content from the second disc and I’ll die happy.

Thank you for putting so much effort into these posts. I rarely comment but I always read them. It feels like reading an informal short review of a random game every day, like having a friend telling me what they played the day before. Sometimes I even add the game to my wishlist.

You don’t need to ever interact with Galaxy to play your games, not even to download the offline installer. And the download option is not hidden on the website.

Ooh, seems really interesting. Thanks for the recommendation! I’ve added it to my wishlist :)

This was not on my Bingo card.

It’s rare to see a RPGmaker game with VA. I wonder how that happened. RPGmaker is the tool that you use when you don’t have money to spend on anything but still want to make a game.

You got me curious. I’ll check it one of these days. I like narrative-heavy games and it seems right up my alley.

I use Fossify Clock and I’m having the same problem.

Is Halo Studios just 343 rebranded, or a new studio? I’m not up to date with Halo/Xbox news.

I’ve just checked the rules and yes it could have an NSFW tag even though no nudity is shown but that is a far cry from “has no place”

Screenshots of a game have a place in this community when they are used to actually discussing the game. Which is the point a lot of these “daily screenshot” posts are missing. There is no discussion here because OP didn’t bother discussing anything, it’s just a random collection of pics. Unless you count “showing that the game has a player-controlled camera” as “demoing game mechanics”.

I would 100% consider this a low-effort post, which is against the rules of c/games.

Is this kind of horny-posting really necessary?

There are countless NSFW/barely NSFW communities out there, including a metric ton of anime pic communities. This has nothing to do with c/games.

At least tag it appropriately.

It’s insane that Nintendo feels the need to go after the strugglers that play on emulator, despite their console being the most successful on the market, still selling like crazy after almost a decade, and with the successor being one of the most anticipated consoles ever. That line must go up, even if it’s just an inch more.

Fuck Nintendo.

Lords of the Fallen - The Lords of the Fallen: The return of the Fallen Lords, Part 2/368

I remember playing MGS as a kid and thinking “graphics will never get better than this”.

It didn’t age well, but I still think of it as one of the most witchcraft-powered games I’ve ever played. I still can’t believe that they were able to craft such gorgeous environments and fluid, cinematic cutscenes on the PS1.

To his day, it’s still one of my favourite games ever.

Sony looking at the rotting corpse of Xbox and taking notes. But only the wrong ones.

Don’t you find it rather… situational?

I blame the news outlets for making it public and screaming from the rooftops that they were bypassing it.

It’s not the journalists’ fault if they are informing people of the existence of something. And the idea that gamers would’ve been able to enjoy the mod without Sony noticing if journalists never spoke of it is dumb.

So anyone have a copy saved?

I’m still able to download the file from the original link.

https://www.nexusmods.com/godofwarragnarok/mods/22?tab=files&file_id=74

This was the original description of the mod:

Notes
This project does not touch or modify any original game code and is NOT intended to encourage the piracy.

1. Download the latest release
2. Copy the version.dll and PsPcSdk.dll to the game folder
3. Enjoy!

Troubleshooting:
If you still encounter the login screen error, make sure to remove this file first:
C:\Users[Username]\Saved Games\God of War Ragnarök[AccountID]\userpreferences
Upon the first popup when it asks to link the Steam account, press “NO” button.

It’s worth mentioning that the mod could stop working with future updates of the game, however.

This is coming to PC, Xbox and Nintendo Switch as well (source: Twitter). I’ve not played them but I’ve heard good things about these games, so it’s nice that they made them available to the modern audience.

Many old JRPGs are fairly grind-prone, though. I wonder if they’ll introduce some QoL features like the FF remasters, such as a fast forward toggle. And from what I’m hearing, the western release was altered to be more grindy, so I’m curious to see if this is a straight port of that version, or if they restored the original progression as it had been conceived.

https://blog.playstation.com/2024/09/24/horizon-zero-dawn-remastered-is-coming-to-ps5-pc-october-31-2024/

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered features over 10 hours of re-recorded conversation, mocap and countless graphical improvements that bring the game to the same visual fidelity as its critically acclaimed sequel Horizon Forbidden West. […] The story’s many compelling characters have been upgraded, bringing them in line with current generation advances in character models and rendering.
The audio experience in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered has been significantly enhanced. We’ve completely revamped the sound mix, now supporting PS5 Tempest 3D Audio Tech2 for higher-order ambisonics and Atmos rendering for an immersive soundscape. Our sound design has also seen major improvements, with hundreds of improvements both in-game and in the cinematics.
[…] We’ve integrated custom haptics for the DualSense controller throughout the game, providing tactile feedback that heightens immersion. Additionally, we’ve introduced a new optional accessibility feature that utilizes sound and haptic feedback to notify players of interactable elements, such as pickups, that were previously only indicated visually.
[…] The PC version (Account for PlayStation Network required on PC) on Windows includes the PlayStation overlay with Trophy support and has its own set of features, such as support for ultra-wide resolutions and the latest performance enhancing technologies like NVIDIA DLSS 3 and AMD FSR 3.1 with frame generation. […]
Many of the accessibility features that were first introduced in Horizon Forbidden West have been included for this Remastered version as well; remappable controls, haptic cues, and various assist toggles will enable all players to fully enjoy the game.
For those that have already played it, we’ve made sure that your old save games will work; […]
For existing owners of Horizon Zero Dawn (PS4, PC) and/or Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition (PS4, PS5, PC): you can upgrade to the digital version of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered for $9.99 on both PlayStation 5 console and on PC (via Steam or Epic Game Store). This includes fans who added the game to their libraries during PlayStation’s Play At Home initiative.
Owners of the Horizon Zero Dawn PS4 game disc can access this offer by inserting the game disc into their PS5 console (and will need to keep the disc inserted each time to play the game).
[…]PS4 game disc owners who buy the PS5 Digital Edition disc-free console will not be able to access the upgrade offer.
For new fans, the game can be purchased for $49.99 on PlayStation Store, Steam, or Epic Game Store. You will receive the Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition.

Emphasis is mine.

This is just a glorified update, not a remaster. For the most part, it’s a cashgrab and I would be hard pressed to justify the full price point they are asking for this thing. At least they are offering the update at a discount for existing customers.

But it’s hilarious that the existing customers who bought the game physically and then bought their new flagship console apparently are not entitled to the discount. I don’t understand if Sony just doesn’t care about the PS5 Pro and its users, or they think that people will buy the console + external disc tray for this?

Oh, and now the game requires a PSN account on PC as well, and they only mentioned Steam and Epic Store despite the game being also released on GoG.

Happy to see this one finally released outside of Apple Arcade. It’s wild that it was an Apple exclusive to begin with.

They’re not the worst thing ever, but I’m happy when a game finds another way to challenge the player that isn’t “throw an enemy encounter at the player every ten steps”.

Nowadays I particularly enjoy games where the encounter is fought on the map itself instead of having a transition screen and a separate map. Games like Sea of Stars, or Yakuza Kiwami for example. I find that removing the transition screen also removes much of the tedium I feel with enemy encounters in video games.

I’ve spent a good chunk of my childhood playing Tekken 3 with my brother and our friends. I just suck at fighting games :D

I love the character design of this game so much. Too bad that I’m not good at this type of game…