That’s my thinking. I can imagine a live service game needing about 10 new lines from a character every few months, and depending on the hassle of recording studios, AI could be great for that - IF it can be set up in such a way that its use is only applied with permission of the actor who created the voice. They’d also have the right to refuse AI voicing for that session, provided they give a reasonable plan for in-person recording.

Even if I enjoyed a lot of that game, I feel sad that it often felt small-scope; tight hallways, no “canal/highway” type sequences, and only three guns. You don’t even use the gravity gloves in the innovative ways you use the gravity gun.

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity

Giving some Weird Al vibes with that mission…

Anecdote alert: I mean, I went to Mint thinking this to be true. The first release I tried didn’t even support my (years old) WiFi drivers, and then the second couldn’t run levels in Hitman. (Bazzite did, however, so distro apparently matters)

I used to enjoy Gmod/SFM animations, but that content naturally takes months of work for people to put out. That was okay because there were dozens of amateurs always releasing their own things; but now, the trend is for weekly or even more frequent videos, which means animators need to rush to put out trendy 8 second shorts, switch to low-effort mediums like Let’s Plays, or just stop getting visitors entirely.

Every so often, I find a great animator that’s sitting in the last category getting their detailed animations quashed, and I get to see the 3 videos they’ve put out in the last 5 months; still wish YouTube could put them in my recommendations.

At this point what would make the most sense is an “Xbox Series Z” for people that want higher-performing games. I just don’t see thousands of people buying another $600 console for like 5 games, when most will continue to support the Xbox One. (Yes, Xbox One - most games on the front page of their store still support their old console)

Hard to say what’s the absolute best one, but some highlights:

Finale of Ace Attorney Justice for All; when you finally have the change in circumstances needed to pin the real killer and send them into a genuine panic.

Pizza Tower, final boss third phase: When Peppino sees that Pizza Face is sending him a Boss Rush, and flips his shit, annihilating each boss at lightning speed.

Ghost Trick, Phantom Detective: The final “4 minutes before death”, and multiple last revelations

Most of these are memories of story-driven moments nailed in by very solid soundtracks, which has very much convinced me how important music is to these games.

That’s the thing, I was careful about my wording; “if their only intention is to step up to a higher object”. If I tell someone to get on top of a cement block, their impulse won’t be to do a parkour jump where they’re tucking their legs, they’ll likely use their hands to lift themselves up. They wouldn’t even think of their action as a “jump”. When people press the spacebar in a video game, the intent is clearly to get higher onto the thing in front of them, it’s just most games choose not to express the particular actions a human does to do that (much like how we dropped Tomb Raider’s approach of manually holding a button to grab onto ledges)

In DRG, the way they differentiate intention is with the direction you’re looking - you can only mantle onto platforms you’re looking towards. So, you wouldn’t get many occasions where you’re dodging sideways and accidentally get on a platform.

In DOOM Eternal, they got rid of crouch, and put the grenade launcher on there. G was changed to toggle between your two grenade types. In Deep Rock Galactic, Ctrl uses the player’s laser pointer, a tool for communicating to teammates that doesn’t really impact gameplay. Having a free keybind offers a number of ways to enhance or simplify the game; if they wanted to go for simple measures, it could be a context-sensitive VO button, like spotting out enemy players.

You and I might do it as a connected reflex between the space key and ctrl key to always get a higher chance of reaching a ledge with no drawbacks, but it makes no digetic sense. People in real life don’t do a squat mid-air if their only intention is to step up to a higher object.

FPSes of both the realistic and cartoony variety have been introducing step-ups as a way to simplify movement for a long time. Examples: DOOM 2016, Deep Rock Galactic. It also means that they can connect other important game functionality to the Crouch button if that keybind just doesn’t do much for the intended gameplay.

We see a lot of the gold of indies rising above the crowd, but there’s still lots of indie studios failing. Think of one of your favorite indies, and try checking to see if they’ve made a second game - many don’t even get that far.

Minority opinion, I think there’s a lot they could do for Team Fortress 3.

• Reset expectations on cosmetics to reduce flaming ghost hats
• Invent female versions of each merc and a new character/voice for Soldier’s deceased actor
• Add an unobtrusive mantling system to replace crouch jumping
• Console crossplay
• Simplify weapons by making Flare gun and Sandwich defaults for respective classes
• Retool matchmaking system

I don’t remember there being any textual dialog in the game except for a few portions of the manual, so I’m not sure what you mean with the central temple. Its main activation comes from both towers, and as someone said, the first simply requires a short trip through a forest and beating a large guard; but the second requires a VERY long path.

Valve used to do ARGs for some of their major releases. It’ll be kinda sad if there’s just not enough energy around for people to figure out their puzzle pieces here.

I’m pretty sure even if the Steam store doesn’t do it, there are tools to search Steam that can exclude tags, right?

Seems like for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle it will be under half a year.

ah yes, port the billion dollar decades old high-fidelity engine that carefully manages memory to java, a language minecraft struggled to break free from to achieve any meaningful performance or mobile porting options. thank you, no one thought of that before.

Glad to see that strikes are having an effect.

Game bundles like from Fanatical are a good start. You can’t return them if you have issues, but they’re great if you haven’t played any of the offerings given.

A similar thing would be Xbox Game Pass, but that very much locks you into their ecosystem, and they’re clearly done investing into worthwhile games.

I have not played Sekiro, but I have played an indie knockoff called Kanagi Usagi, so I’m basing my understanding on that.

From how it felt, the health bars are a decoration and the real boss health is poise. I get what they were going for, but it causes a lot of stress for any interruption like healing or long enemy attacks that cause their poise to regenerate, feeling like your effort and time was wasted.

A game I liked better in every respect was Another Crab’s Treasure. You build poise even just by hold-blocking, but your “shield” is a limited resource; one you can choose to invest in with RES. It keeps the idea of encouraging you to keep pressure, by building poise damage on regular attacks, but also punishes you for dodge-rolling as a default for every attack (you’ll never get a “capsize”). And, you still get the reward factor of parries if you release block at the perfect time.

And yeah, ACT is a bit easier; but I’d say its chosen level of difficulty made it a more enjoyable game.

I hope they don’t remember the Alexander raids too fondly. Even when I’ve done one before, understanding and remembering the specific goals is infuriating, for myself and all the other players involved.

It’s okay to have something complicated, as long as it has diegetic meaning that makes sense to players quickly.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth looks really good. I can’t wait until it’s done so I can play it.

Previously, I had mused over vague ideas about whether blockchain technologies could go into a “proof of real person” system, by one-way-hashing information used to verify only basic details about a person. Eg: They exist, are a unique person, and are over a certain age. Ideally, it could be set up in a way that cannot easily correlate them between company databases.

That said, no real need to poke holes in the idea, because…that was the easy part, and it will probably never happen (or be far more draconian than I describe)

I’ve been saying for a while that the best thing that can happen to standard, microtransaction-free, singleplayer video games is: An increase in the US Minimum Wage.

Sadly, that doesn’t help international markets as much. I really wish we could get rid of key resellers so that games sold somewhere like Africa can be fairly measured out in terms of loaves of bread, not US dollars.

Full Metal Furies is a very fun “beatemup-style” game very much focused on unique character abilities and cooperation. The writing is very funny, and each character operates very different. Currently $5.

Oh, and on the topic of coop games with primarily female casts: Assault Android Cactus is a lot of fun even for people who haven’t played games much. Rather than use a teammate reviving mechanic, players can pick themselves up - but everyone is fighting their timer to complete the mission before their batteries run out. Levels are quick and chaotic. $5.

The Sexy Brutale is a fun Groundhog Day puzzle game set in a casino where you must sneak around to prevent the staff from murdering the guests. The story seems insignificant but becomes astounding towards the end. It’s currently $5.

Unmetal is a very fun Metal Gear parody that isn’t totally lax with its writing - maintaining just enough serious tone to keep you invested and break your expectations when it uses the storytelling format to throw you for a loop. Currently $4.

Homebody is another Groundhog Day puzzle game, also about preventing your friends from being murdered - but with a very different tone. Creepy at times, and requires a slow unraveling of every one of the mansion’s puzzles. $5

Tyrion Cuthbert is an astoundingly-done indie take on the Ace Attorney format, set in a fantasy universe with its own magical rules. 5 full cases, with some big character moments in the later ones. Currently $10.

Near Death is a short horror game based on surviving arctic chill at an abandoned base at night. It feels much like an indie game version of The Martian, especially when you contact personnel that can give you tips but can’t send a rescue party. Currently $2.

I’m curious whether that new feature, Hidden games, appears in this summary. I think it had some early missteps because it would disappear from some views but appear in others.

I think highlighting the success story is kind of missing both the great circumstances Larian built that game under, and the giant mountain of singleplayer games that are pretty good, but hit no success at all.

Hello? Halo 3 sold map packs, and possibly other things I’m not remembering.

That’s setting aside that Halo 3 was an exclusive. It wasn’t made to sell itself - it was made to sell Xboxes.

I’m still a bit unsure how plausible it is to make a multiplayer game, keep it updated, and not sell content within the game.

The good devs restrict it to cosmetic options, but I can’t say I’ve moralistically stuck to that kind of perfection - I’m okay with new weapons/characters as long as they stay balanced against old ones. It becomes a sort of hazy issue.

Something a lot of people miss (and actually Far Cry 6 forgot/discarded) is most Far Cry games end with a very deconstructive and sad message towards the violence you’ve achieved through the game.

They tend to miss since people that care about writing skip these games. I’m curious what they could do with it though.

I used to only use this for game recording. But, it got a glitch where games record with a red tint ever since I upgraded my monitor. Thankfully, every single gaming helper app seems to feature recording now, so I just switched to another.

I really appreciated learning how much Immersive Sim is in Indiana Jones.

You get a hazy overhead map and need to navigate lots of hidden entrances, presented through verticality, exploring to find valuables. You can win in combat through good reflexes, but once surrounded your only option is to run. There’s no detective vision, and it instead relies on vocal barks where guards chatter or cough or sneeze often enough to remind you where they are.

The stealth isn’t fully on par, since you’re low on gadgets and darkness doesn’t seem to do a lot, but it’s there. I got the same sense of glee as Soulslike games when I take a long circuit to some door, unlock it, and it leads back to a common area, providing me a new shortcut.

Is that with Steam’s “recent off-topic activity” system turned on, or off?

Steam introduced something where if they see a large scale of reviews in a short period that express thoughts unrelated to the game itself, they exclude those reviews from the default view of the page.

Considering Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is coming to PlayStation (Bethesda, owned by MS), it’s obviously no longer Microsoft’s goal to keep to themselves.

I don’t think the “has no games” argument matters much for either console anymore. It’s now more about Japanese devs releasing on PlayStation purely out of familiarity (eg, Final Fantasy), and which monthly subscription you like more.

Considering how simple its premise is, Another Crab’s Treasure seems pretty basic, like its story doesn’t have much left, at several points. People online gave some takes that four boss fights from the end, they thought each one would be the final boss.

Far Cry 3 also did this well. You finish the skill tree, do the last few missions where the increased power slides the difficulty down…and then it turns out you unlock a whole other island to make use of your full ability tree in every encounter.

Ending B was absolutely just padding.

There’s maybe a few segments where it’s interesting to see 9S’s perspective, but so many other scenes that weren’t bot-specific.

The most painful thing will be if the game turns out to be bad, and we have to painstakingly explain “Yes, it was bad, but it’s not somehow specifically because it features a bald female lead.”

It could be in this very room! It could be NBA 2024! It could be Red Dead Redemption 2! It could even be-

That’s actually what I hope they’re fixing with the remake.

Early puzzles were clever, later puzzles just have so many parts it feels like a laborious chore to get every laser and box and replay exactly where it needs to be. I’m sorry to say I didn’t even finish the game.