That was definitely a bold design decision, but I’m glad it paid off for Gearbox. Never before had I played a first person shooter from the perspective of an underpaid pumpkin.

Purely from a game design standpoint and ignoring all corporate and sales considerations, Valve.

Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and Half-Life: Alyx are literally three separate Citizen Kanes of video games. All took immense steps forward in the direction of removing the layers of abstraction between video games and human experience.

From a meta perspective that considers things like the process of game development and the accessibility of video games on PC, also Valve. Steam has done wonders in the way of unifying (to the best of Valve’s ability) the user experience of DRM into a very manageable interface. Proton has taken the barriers to entry into the realm of video games down to the fucking studs. The Steam Deck is laying the foundation for eliminating the dominance of any one video game hardware manufacturer.

I’d be hard-pressed to say any other development studio has been more fundamental to the gaming industry period, let alone PC gaming.

Come to think of it, why did Sony even bother designing a new controller for the playstation? Atari had that handled back in the 80’s so what good did they think they were doing.

EDIT: Holy hell I just realized how insane it was for Sholes, Soule, and Glidden to develop the QWERTY typewriter. We already had pens! What a waste of time!

Pretty sure they meant a controller designed for use while not hunching over a desk

I’ve spent boatloads more time watching football than playing football, too.

Also, with Rainbow 6: Siege, there’s so many ways to play the game that I love watching videos to get ideas for new strategies to try.

Lastly, contrary to popular belief, a lot of games actually require thinking about what you’re doing. Time spent playing is not really time spent spacing out so I will happily watch videos about a game I like to play when I don’t have the energy to actually focus on playing them.

Dude you must be so good at fractions now!!!

Yay! Just, please don’t leave it untouched. Mild spoiler, but the game tells you how long you should play each session and the first is 30 minutes. So please give it a 30 minute chance to grab you

Most of the really good games have been posted already, so here are three that you should play regardless if you’ve never heard of them before:

1. Frog Fractions
2. Duty Calls: The Calm Before the Storm
3. GAME OF THE YEAR 420 BLAZE IT

Check them all out because they’re short and free

Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery. This game is fairly old now (like maybe 15 years) and I’ve only played it once and it took like 4 hours of total playtime, but it remains among the most memorable games I’ve witnessed. I HIGHLY recommend it.

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to say nobody would or should care I just mean my head has been so filled with anxious thoughts that hearing about a corporate video game not doing well profit-wise sounds like an onion article headline to me.

Again, I don’t mean to say it’s irrelevant it just sounds irrelevant

Reading this headline feels so fucking surreal right now. Who could possibly care?

I mean I guess I understand that, though I haven’t bought any passes and still think the game is great

Monthly subscription to what? The Battle Pass?

I’m a huge fan of Burnout Paradise. The crash physics and cameras are so addicting that I’ll drive up and down the same street just flipping my car on its roof using the same split ramp just to see the carnage. The driving is a wonderful arcadey feel that makes insane turns easy to pull off, and the crashes make those insane turns addicting to completely fail.

Many people say the early Burnout games are better, but I’ve never played them and Paradise has remained entertaining for 17 years

You’re happy they’re removing something you could easily ignore but that would otherwise make other people happy?

A FANTASTIC underground couch co-op game is “Super Space _____” (read: Super Space Blank).

Imagine Asteroids, but everyone is controlling a cannon on the same ship, and the only means of propelling the ship is Newton’s third law. When your cannon hits an asteroid, it turns your color and when the asteroid leaves the game space the points for that asteroid go to the person whose color the asteroid is. If the ship leaves the game area, the game is over. It’s the best example of co-ompetitive I’ve ever seen.

It’s only available on Digipen’s website (link) since it was a student project but it’s magnificent for up to 4 players

I think I agree with you. I was honestly extremely tempted to buy a PS5 for the single player sequels Sony’s put out recently (Horizon FW, God of War R, and SM 2) but it’s become clear they’re all coming to PC so fuck it I can be patient.

Here’s hoping Sony wises up and greenlights a PS5 (with a lil PC side release) remaster of Bloodborne

How is this the end of the cycle? Is it because there are rumored mid-cycle upgrades like the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X coming soon, or have console cycles really shortened from 7/8 years to 4?

Fred & Bread looks amazing though I have not played it. Two penguins who are tied together with a rope have to climb a mountain together using nothing but each other and momentum

Spoilers? Man I finished the game and I still have no idea what’s going on

Eternal is one of my favorite games of all time, and it has a massive leg up on this game. Firstly, it seemed like a complete surprise when it was announced. The gap between DOOM 3 and Eternal was like 16 years. It’s been 5 years since Eternal was announced, and 3 since it was released; I’m convinced passion projects are not released on timelines that coincide with shareholder expectations. Not to say Dark Ages can’t be good, but the second big red flag about this game is that now it’s owned by Microsoft and that’s it’s own can of worms.

There is absolutely nothing appealing about this to me. If I was at all interested in this 2 hour cutscene I’d just go watch a Fast and Furious movie for 10% of the price

I’d venture to say that ID has not yet released a bad DOOM game, however they did almost make Call of DOOM. Under Microsoft’s leadership I’d say they’re at risk of making the worst DOOM game ever, but we’ll have to wait and see

Inb4: all nostalgia hype, solid core gameplay, nothing new or groundbreaking, F2P multiplayer, battlepass grindfest. Bonus points if it’s an open world.

Microsoft has become all-too predictable and I have absolutely no faith that this game will be anything greater than Halo Infinite

I played the shit out of 2 as well. When 3 came along it had literally all of the improvements I wanted to see, and it felt so much better to boot, but the core gameplay had grown stale because of how much time I spent in the second

“We know everyone loves billionaires, so now there are a billion billion guns! And all the guns do over a billion damage!!” Idk why but I just get the sense they’ll make that kind of joke here

Yeah, hero based-shooters haven’t been good since that one with the dumb name that came out in 2007. What was it called again? Squad Castle 2 or something?

What climate goals?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the lore of the Legend of Zelda change from game to game based on whatever flavor of knight-saves-princess story framing best suits the gameplay progression? How is this going to be a unique movie? Why does it benefit from the Zelda branding other than to generate franchise hype?

I’ve managed to avoid spoilers this long for Spider-man 2. If Ragnarok is coming to PC then I’m pretty confident I can hold out until it comes to PC as well

I played God of War (2018) a few months ago without any more context than what is known about Kratos in the public eye. The 2018 remake does not tell you what Kratos did, but it shows you how it affects him. Flawlessly. This game nails the “show don’t tell” approach like so few do. If you like narrative driven games, or want a good modern story about a man trying to be a good father, or like well-designed action games, or like norse mythology, this game fucking rocks.

“I hope they’ll find my diamond ring in the dumpster out back”

I can’t think of a game that Valve has released just to make money except for Artifact which totally flopped.

From what I understand, Valve has a non-hierarchical internal personnel structure and projects are started because someone has an idea that other people at the company like and want to work on.

Half-Life 3 won’t get traction inside Valve unless it has something to push the envelope like the other main-line games had. Half-Life had unrivaled first person storytelling. Half-Life 2 has unrivaled physics to play with. Half-Life Alyx had an interactive environment unlike anything else that exists even still. My money says if Valve can’t think of something gameplay-wise that’s as enticing right now as any of the previous games had when they were released, they don’t care that the story is still on a cliffhanger.

The wild monetary successes of Call of Duty and Fortnite send a clear message: treat unsupervised children as prey and you will earn billions of dollars

Leave it to microsoft to join the party years late with a product that completely misses the point of what makes the original to their copy actually popular

Shooting out a window sucks everyone in the vicinity out

This looks like it would be fun if it’s all about the goofy physics, and the levels are structured to support it. If the squirrel doesn’t have a chance to be launched backwards and fly off of its perch at every trigger pull then it’s a missed opportunity. And couch multiplayer would be extremely fun with this game since it would be so chaotic. Multiple squirrels getting yeeted by recoil while trying to hit each other sounds hilarious

I would love to relay some of my positive experiences with Rainbow 6: Siege’s reputation system to him… if he didn’t just prompt for input on Xitter…

Gotcha, well there are still weekly challenges accessible through Uplay which reward you with renown (like 250 per challenge, which isn’t a lot and it’s Uplay, but it’s something). I don’t think there’s any tie between the reputation system and renown.

I do know that if you have multiple matches in a row where teammates commend you, you get on a commendation streak for which other players on your team can see an indicator so they know you’ve been a helpful or at least enjoyable teammate, and that streak also grants you a +1.0% bonus to your chances of getting an alpha pack if you win a match while on the streak. Furthermore, there are 5 reputation ranks: Dishonorable, Disruptive, Respectable, Esteemed, and Exemplary. Esteemed and Exemplary players should soon start getting more rewards like regular alpha pack drops and possibly more. Dishonorable players are already locked out of the ranked playlist.

My experience so far has not been that you are punished for trash talk, unless you’re just being an absolute dick and/or bigot, and players are not more “fake friendly” now, but instead are less toxic and less likely to rage over the mic/text chat and are also more likely to try to be helpful with callouts and planning strats for the next round. To me, that’s an all-around great change. I’m not sure if my experience alone is worth much, but I believe I have 300-500 hours in the game from the last few years alone so I would like to think I have at least some sense of the trend in the community.

I’m confused. What “weekly Renown grind” are you talking about? And no, you don’t get Renown for having a good reputation. But yes, rewarding players for being friendly is absolutely a good thing.