I am inclined to believe that Krafton are completely in the right, they were not lying about Charlie’s side-hustle, after all. He is genuinely putting his time into producing three different film projects, and there is no way you are going to juggle these with the full time development of a video game sequel…

Krafton also wouldn’t put out a statement like this if it weren’t true, otherwise they’d be getting sued out of their arse.

AoE III was excellent. It explored new ideas and did it well. As a long time AoE fan who played all of them since the first, AoE II is massively overhyped, and AoE III is unfairly shit on.

AoE2 genuinely had a small competitive scene on Voobly and Gameranger. It was being played as a grassroots esport by dedicated fans even before the HD and DE remasters.

One of the third game’s glaring problems was how poorly balanced it was. IIRC the winning strategy was to play French (who already had overpowered cavalry), rush to the third age and use a particular tech to effectively blockade your opponent’s home city and prevent them from playing anything in their deck.

Even when AoE3’s Definitive Edition came out, fixed a lot of the balance issues and added a bunch of new civs via expansions, the damage was already done and sales were so low that Microsoft cancelled their latest expansion and halted development a few months ago.

Also they were voluntold to do Halo Wars, and they did a good job on it. It’s a good game, and it did an excellent job on console with a controller scheme, which was impressive at the time.

Played the Xbox 360 demo of Halo Wars near its initial release and wasn’t impressed. All I really remember about the game beyond that was how bad the box art looked. I mean those spartans look like they have fucking long giraffe necks.

Gamepad controls and real time strategy just don’t mix. You either make something so mechanically slow that keyboard & mouse would shit all over that control style, or have to bastardize the game mechanics so much that it’s all but fully automated. The only game I’ve seen remotely work as a gamepad RTS is Tooth and Tail.

I 100% believe the claim that Microsoft executives mistakenly thought they’ve just nabbed the Donkey Kong IP by acquiring Rare. Definitely seems like something some c-suite ghouls who are totally out of touch with the games industry would believe.

Also, I’m not sure how much of Rare’s downfall was due to Microsoft’s mismanagement or their core talent leaving to form other studios. Maybe a bit of both.

To be fair, Age of Empires III was bad, and the last project Ensemble was working on before they got shuttered was a Halo MMO.

Also, Robot Entertainment (the studio that rose from the ashes of Ensemble) were the initial developers of Age of Empires Online, which was P2W slop that 90% of players couldn’t run because Games For Windows LIVE was a buggy crock of shit. And since then they’ve released nothing but Orcs Must Die games.

Eighteen months ago, I was an advocate for Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard, because I didn’t think anybody could have done a worse job than Bobby Kotick.

Phil Spencer has proven me wrong. This arsehole tried to shut down Tango Gameworks after they literally shadowdropped a critically acclaimed GOTY contender.

Yup.

Best kart/racer combination in the game is genuinely one of the Bowser ones, due to having the lowest acceleration and highest top speed in the game.

I’ll add some context, as I actually own a Switch 2 and Mario Kart World.

The game is full of “intermission tracks”, where the next race starts at the previous track and you effectively drive to the next track for the first two laps, then complete a single lap of the destination track. For example, in the Mushroom Cup, rather than start the second race at Crown City, you’d instead start at Mario Bros Circuit (the 1st track in the cup), drive to Crown City for two “laps” then complete a single lap of Crown City.

Many people voted Random in online multiplayer instead of picking one of the three interconnecting tracks, because the intermission tracks frankly suck for the most part, and are just straight-line roads. By picking Random, the game would actually pick a completely different course and you’d do a standard 3-lap race, like you would by selecting the course in Time Trial mode.

At least that’s what used to happen, before the latest patch… Now, random actually picks one of the three interconnecting courses, and no longer picks a random course.

To be honest, I think intermission tracks only really work in Free Roam and Knockout Tour. It doesn’t feel innovative to effectively drive to the next racetrack when you still have to wait between race results and loading screens.

Final Fantasy XIV may lack the point and click tick based combat and semi AFK gameplay but it’s a solid MMORPG.

What puts me off is the lack of games this generation. I’m not spending £700 on a console where the only worthwhile exclusive that isn’t already on PC is Astro Bot.

If that’s the best thing that Sony and Microsoft can give us after three years of releasing their current consoles, then we’re well and truly on the verge of another market crash.

If it’s not too late to ask for an invite…

https://steamcommunity.com/id/clbull

The Sonic fandom continues to amaze me. For every mountain of lewd fan art and crappy original characters created by fans, you get an incredible fangame that absolutely trumps official efforts from Sega themselves.

Pulling off a kart racer in the Legacy DOOM engine of all things is a seriously impressive feat.

I see Robotnik as an entirely separate character to Eggman. The AOSTH/Mean Bean Machine character was a bumbling idiot, and Robotnik Prime from SATAM/Archie Comics was a brutal overlord.

MapleStory’s problems aren’t just the predatory MTX shit, which got so bad that they actually released a Reboot server that disabled a lot of this stuff, but just overall content bloat.

On top of the 5 core explorer classes (Magician, Thief, Warrior, Bowman and Pirate), there are Cygnus Knights versions of these classes, and 29 overpowered hero classes that are mostly based on the 5 aforementioned class groups

Big Bang streamlined the game excessively and ruined the overall flow of Victoria Island, making it vastly more linear. It also made Ossyria much higher levelled. Whereas for example you could probably survive in Aqua Road as a level 35, it now has a level 80 requirement. One of my characters is stuck near Ariant because they changed the second zone to be a 120 zone.

TIL that typing in a username, server address and hitting ‘Connect’ is a bad UX.

Wish they gave as much of a shit about shutting down pedophilia and OnlyFans leak servers as they do licking Nintendo’s boots.

Discord is an inherently unsafe platform.

I’ll wait and see what Nintendo announce, but it’s likely that I’ll be skipping this gen too.

There are very few AAA games that actually interest me right now. I have little reason to get a PS5 and even fewer reasons to buy an Xbox Series console. If hell truly freezes over and the Switch successor turns out to be a far more powerful console with better online capabilities, then I just might buy it.

I’d be more supportive of Valve if Team Fortress 2 wasn’t a dumpster fire to play in 2024. The game is infested with bots that make anything outside of independently moderated community servers unplayable.

Even Counter Strike 2 has dogshit anticheat despite the boasts that VAC Live was a solution that could surpass Vanguard, to the point where the only good competitive experience you can have is to play on FaceIt or ESEA servers with their own ring 0 anticheat solution.

What put me off of the game initially was that it had a nasty bug where the game would immediately crash and close to desktop after about 15 to 30 mins of play. So if you didn’t regularly save, you’d lose progress.

This happened to me on multiple OSes (Windows 98, XP, 7 & 8.1), across different copies of the game and after trying various community patches to fix the problem to no avail

Bought the GOTY edition with the Bloodmoon and Tribunal expansions on Steam when it was heavily discounted and it works just fine.

Unfortunately this is one of those many instances where a game is released absolutely fucking broken and you have to buy the expansion to fix it. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 is another such game where the base game has a game breaking bug can randomly plummet the stats of all your rides.

Wait… The Trey Parker? As in the South Park producer?

Also, the whole “Play War Thunder now with my link…” bullshit at the beginning of the description makes this guy sound like as much of a fucking grifter as the people he’s exposing. Fuck me.

Welcome to YouTube. Advertising revenues are at an all time low and pretty much anything could get you randomly demonetized.

Unfortunately a lot of content creators have to get by either through crowdfunding platforms like Patreon or through shilling random crap.

Not looking good for Jirard. Something is definitely up and the IRS really should be placing the whole family and charity under investigation.

I’ll reserve my full judgement for the Some Ordinary Gamers video (Mutahar puts out good content), but based on what Karl presented alone, I strongly suspect that somebody is embezzling charity funds. So much shit doesn’t add up here.

And to those stating that Karl is talking about stuff he doesn’t remotely understand, I work in commercial reporting, am fully AAT qualified, am in my second year of ACCA study and previously served as treasurer of a housing charity. Even I think something is seriously up with their finances.

Karl Jobst is also very careful about throwing accusations around. You would be if you had the nerve to go up against Billy Mitchell…

Didn’t think that the Completionist’s final challenge would be a ten year stint in federal prison, but then again, this is a crazy timeline.

I don’t understand what market the PlayStation Portal was designed for.

You’re basically paying £200 for a DualSense controller MacGyver’d on a tablet screen that can only remote play PS5 games or stream from PSNow. There are both cheaper and better options which support not just Sony’s ecosystem but also other gaming platforms.

Not to mention that cloud gaming in general just sucks.

Half Life 3 has been delayed by another three months.

I think some explanations are worse than others.

Either the OHF have been incompetent with filing their annual returns, have been incompetent with actually ensuring the money goes to the right people, or there’s some embezzlement going on.

In all honesty I’m shocked. Jirard is one of the few YouTubers I have (well, had) a tonne of respect for.

Part of me wants to hope there’s a rational explanation for why he and his foundation sat on viewer donations for a whole decade whilst knowingly misleading donors that their funds were going to a charitable cause, but I really think this is going to end his career. Just wait until every other YouTuber picks this story up, or when it goes viral on Reddit…

I’m just happy to potentially see Bobby Kotick, Ion Hazzikostas, Mike Ybarra, etc ousted.

Don’t get me wrong. Fifteen years ago I would have flipped if Microsoft put in a bid to buy Vivendi and get their paws on Blizzard, after seeing how badly they ruined Rare. Activision tanked the brand so bad that I’m actually rooting for Microsoft.

This may be a shocker but games on the same level of scope as Cyberpunk 2077 take years of effort to make. We simply cannot pump them out as fast as consumers and shareholders demand their release.

Hello Games had a similar issue with No Man’s Sky. Ubisoft also did with both Division games.

Same here. Both turned into gigantic assholes and ditched me because I was a lower rank than them and got fun out of playing off meta champions.

I wish 1v1 MOBAs were a thing, because the worst part about playing League, Dota, Smite, etc is the community.

I used to have a lot of respect for Az from HeelVsBabyface as a content creator back when he did WoW videos. Many of the fanboys who play Blizzard games dismissed him as a whiny bitch when he complained about issues with the game long before other more respected creators (i.e. Bellular, Asmongold, Sodapoppin, Preach) jumped on the very same ‘fuck Blizzard’ bandwagon.

Watched him a lot less after he branched away from WoW stuff because his content was more anti-woke and not really of my interest.

His two minute anti-pronoun rant made him look like a clown and was the last straw that made me unsub to his YouTube and unfollow him on X.

What people like Az seem to forget is that Starfield is set hundreds of years in the future. I can understand why a pronoun selection menu would look out of place in a medieval setting like The Elder Scrolls, but not in a game set 300 years in the future.

Also, nobody is forcing you to play as a trans or non-binary character. This is not discrimination against white men as Az pointed out in his nonsensical rant. You can make a white male character that identifies with he/him pronouns and not be placed at a disadvantage in the game.

The ranking system is complete dogshit in League, and people instantly dismiss you when you say elo hell is real, because if it was, all these coaching sites like SkillCapped, GameLeap, ProGuides, etc wouldn’t be able to sell you their own brands of snake oil.

Riot’s customer support is also dogshit. The amount of in-game reports, Zendesk tickets, and posts on Twitter/X that have been straight-up ignored are through the roof.

Not to mention… I’m Plat in Wild Rift, which is the dumbed down bastardized mobile version of the game.

Funny thing is Wild Rift recommends different builds. Senna with Grasp of the Undying is considered troll tier in League but is a top build in WR, despite having practically identical movesets…

She literally has the same abilities and the same infinite AD and range scaling on her soul mechanic. This would make Grasp great for her in the main game from how many opportunities she has to buff her health.

Doesn’t China literally have a social credit score system?

I think it’s a problem with competitive gaming. Your average player in any competitive game is a meta slave that’s incapable of any kind of critical thinking.

My fifteen-year-old brain’s thought process at the time was that DK had very high innate armor and health regeneration, and Meka would not only bolster that, but allow me to heal/buff allies, push waves harder since it affects minions, and just snowball the game.

It actually amazes me how much friendlier and more capable of critical thinking people on Lemmy are.

My comment on r/leagueoflegends would have probably been removed by a moderator for breaking some kind of arbitrary hidden rule, or heavily downvoted with people telling me I’m full of shit and elo hell is a myth.

Matchmaking is borked in League and if Riot don’t get off their lazy asses and fix it, game’s gonna die.

For Korea and China, probably quite easy.

Both regions require you to register for the game using a residential ID due to strict internet laws in those regions. China’s are so notoriously strict that the kind of toxic degeneracy you’d see on the European or North American servers would probably nuke your social credit score or land you in prison if you tried to pull it there.

As for the West, the only companies from my experience that genuinely ask for personal details beyond a username, email address and password are those that host shoddy Korean MMO’s and have notoriously bad internet security. Valve have tried to address smurfing in the past by requiring accounts to register phone numbers before they can play Ranked, but this can easily be bypassed with cheap burner phones and other services.

DotA Allstars was the worst and was the thing that made me initially not get into MOBAs. I always used to nickname that game Defense of the Assholes because of how toxic the player base was. My teens were otherwise spent playing Footman Frenzy, BattleTanks, WW2/WW1 Battle for Europe, Run Kitty Run and other maps.

Best memory was sixteen years ago being labelled a feeder, kicked from an -apem game on Bnet mid-match, added to a global banlist, and told by the game host to hang myself when I asked him what his fucking problem was.

What was the cardinal sin I committed which led to such a heavy-handed and toxic response, you may ask? I bought Mekanism while playing Dragon Knight. Apparently without any tutorials and in a casual pub match on Blizzard’s own servers, I should have known that players needed to buy Buriza and not a healing/buffing item.

League of Legends has a very unique account selling problem that Riot have proven outright fucking incompetent in addressing.

You need to hit level 30 on your account to start playing Ranked, which can take about 112 hours of cumulative play time to achieve. This has created a black market for fresh League accounts that have been pushed to Level 30 and are ready to be played in Ranked.

Unranked League accounts that are level 30 fetch about $1 - $10 on illicit websites because there are whole industries of Chinese gold farming firms and bots infiltrating the game. If you want an account that’s in Iron 3 or Iron 4 (the two lowest divisions in Ranked), it can fetch a few hundred dollars at bare minimum, at least if DongHuaP is to be believed. Iron accounts are so expensive because of how hard they are to actually get into Iron in the first place without tripping Riot’s automated reporting systems and getting banned, but also they’re lucrative for YouTube content creators because they use them to do ‘Iron to Grandmaster’ series.

I’m somebody who peaked at Archon rank in DOTA 2 (LoL equivalent would be Platinum) and used to play StarCraft II at Master level (second highest league in the game, Grandmaster is top-200 in the region), so I’m not exactly incompetent at RTS or MOBA games. But in League my account is borked and I’m in literal elo hell. I have found it impossible to climb above Iron 2 because of smurfs, bots and powerlevellers inting their accounts deliberately so that they can resell them.

Smurfing is when you play Ranked ladder on an alt-account in a much lower skill bracket with the intention to curb stomp lesser-skilled players.

It’s a very big issue in any competitive multiplayer game, especially direct competitors of DOTA 2 like League of Legends and SMITE. Valve may just be the first company to start actively banning smurfs.

There’s a reason I’m not looking forward to Grand Theft Auto VI.

GTA5 has been out for an entire decade now and has been re-released across three generations of systems. The only post-release content released for it has been to the online mode, and GTA Online is about as pay-to-win as it gets.

Bethesda have pulled similar shit over the years with Skyrim, but the difference is that Skyrim is a largely single player experience without pay-to-win DLC. Also, Bethesda have overwhelmingly embraced the modding community whereas Rockstar and Take Two Interactive have sicced their lawyers and private investigators upon any third-party mod creator in a litigious dick-waving contest that would even put the likes of Nintendo and Disney to shame.

Rockstar have also proven themselves incapable of releasing new games, with the exception of Red Dead Redemption 2, which also never saw any further DLC updates and tried to have its microtransaction-heavy online multiplayer pushed in similar fashion.

The only reason Grand Theft Auto has seen a meteoric level of success is because a lot of people (especially in Britain and the USA) have incredibly poor taste in video games and only care if their console can play the latest FIFA/Madden, Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto.