I bet they’re going to get a ton of sales off of this, because the campaign - especially the beginning of the campaign - is a masterpiece. Absolutely fantastic gameplay. It’s not until you get most of the way through and into the endgame that the cracks start to show, but oh boy do they show.

Strongly recommend that anyone who plays this this weekend and enjoys it give the reviews a good read if you’re considering buying it. Also, you should know that the game will be free to play once it’s out of early access.

All that said, I do strongly recommend giving it a try this weekend if you enjoy ARPGs. It has a very different feel compared to other ARPGs on the market and if it clicks with you, you’ll really enjoy the campaign. I’d strongly recommend playing Solo Self-Found, or at least just ignoring the player market. You can trivialize the gameplay if you buy gear from players; the game feels very much balanced around SSF (and player to player trading is a terrible experience anyway).

If they didn’t want to over hype or give false hope on development for the game, maybe they shouldn’t have hyped the game off the back of their first game more than 6 years too early, idiotic choice imo.

Hey, just in case you’re unaware, they kickstarted the original Hollow Knight, and one of the stretch goals (which was met) was a second playable character (Hornet) as a DLC that backers would get for free. While they were making that DLC, the scope just expanded to the point of it being an entire standalone game (Silksong). They had to communicate to backers that they were forestalling the promised DLC in favor of a sequel; the cat would have been out of the bag then whether they wanted it to be or not. Better for them to announce the sequel publicly at the same time, rather than have it leak via their Kickstarter update.

Based on the username, I assume it’s either auto-translated (with obvious problems) or it’s a non-English keyboard and has problems with some characters as a result. Not throwing shade, just making an observation, for the record.

Maybe I’m in a minority here, but geez… I find it super hard to watch videos that have constant cuts during the speaking like this. I’d much rather just have the video be 5 minutes longer and include the natural pauses.

“Decent reviews”, but it’s a 71 on Metacritic. While in a normal world a 71/100 probably would be “decent”, I, and I think the majority of people, see a 71/100 and assume it’s a steaming pile, because of how absurdly skewed review scores are.

The US has the Fair Access to Banking Act trying to do similar things, but it’s been stagnant for 2 years.

This bill places restrictions on certain banks, credit unions, and payment card networks if they refuse to do business with a person who complies with the law. Restrictions include prohibiting the use of electronic funds transfer systems and lending programs, termination of an institution’s depository insurance, and specified civil penalties.

Banks and other specified financial institutions are allowed to deny financial services to a person only if the denial is justified by a documented failure of that person to meet quantitative, impartial, risk-based standards established in advance by the institution. This justification may not be based upon reputational risks to the institution. Banks may also deny services to a person who engaged in rude or harassing conduct toward an employee of the bank.

The bill establishes the right for a person to bring a civil action for a violation of this bill.

If you enjoy the old school vibe, City of Heroes has been revived through a community effort, and is free with all of the original content plus some new stuff. This has been given official blessing so it’s not going to disappear suddenly.

Also some absolutely great dialog / voice acting.

“You are WOEFULLY deficient in the ways of etiquette, BUT… you have a point.”

Wow, there’s a series I haven’t thought about in like a decade. I recall really enjoying that game way back when, though.

Looking at this list of 3rd party games, I wonder if the reason for this is that most of these games have been available on other platforms already for quite some time. If you were interested in e.g. Hades 2, unless you just didn’t have a PC available, you probably weren’t waiting for an at-the-time unannounced Switch 2 to play it on. Heck, Cyberpunk is 5 years old at this point. Street Fighter 6 is 2 years old and was on a lot of other platforms.

I expect we might see different results when we see more 3rd party games getting simultaneous launch on Switch 2 and other platforms.

That one really baffles me. Prey 2017 would have been right up my alley, but I completely ignored it because I didn’t like Prey 2006. By the time I discovered that it was a game I’d have been interested in, I picked it up on sale for $10 or so. I wonder how many other people had similar experiences.

I love the callout that the story was delivered via text logs, as if voice acting was typically present in anything except FMV-based games in that time period. “Bog standard FPS” is a really funky term for an era when there were only really a few well-known FPS games out there at all.

You’ve got to remember that Marathon 1 was released in 1994, the same year Doom II was released. What else was there at that point? You really had Doom, Marathon, Pathways Into Darkness (also a Bungie title and only sort of an FPS at all), Wolfenstein 3D, System Shock, Hexen / Heretic, and some really niche ones that most people had never even heard of at the time, never mind now.

Could it be that people just don’t want yet another fairly generic live service PvP extraction shooter? No, can’t be.

Man, I’d forgotten how utterly baller that theme is.

Marathon 2 (1995) let you go underwater.

Agreed on this. They’re just so good at making new interesting things that it feels like a bit of a shame to waste time on sequels. I even really enjoyed Pyre, despite it being generally considered the weakest of their games; it was such an interesting setting and premise.

Bastion and Transistor both had very satisfying conclusions to their stories and revisiting either doesn’t feel necessary.

I didn’t say that the overall review is ‘mostly negative’, to be clear; I said that almost all of the (many) negative reviews that exist seem to be talking about the failure to live up to remnant 1.

Thanks for the detailed review; it’s helpful to have a nice comparison between the two. I did enjoy Remnant 1 quite a bit. Would you say the DLC you played is worth buying even considering the generally mixed reviews?

Can you elaborate? Specifically because almost all of the negative Steam reviews, of which there are many, say more or less the opposite - that it tries to do that, but fails to capture what made Remnant so good.

(Not to criticize your opinion, to be clear; it’s on sale and I was strongly considering it as someone who likes Remnant. Sell it for me?)

It’s baffling that they decided to take the Marathon IP and do this with it. If this had been a single player game in the vein of the originals, it would have made sense - they’d capture the attention of people who played it in the 90s and wanted more of that. Who is this supposed to appeal to? I strongly doubt there’s much overlap between people who enjoyed those games in the 90s and people who want live service extraction shooters today.

This is brilliant, thanks for the link!

It’s okay, ‘the shit’ is a weird phrase anyway. And as a Marathon trilogy connoisseur, you’re clearly alright.

This new game has essentially no relation besides name and logo to the old Marathon games. Sadly, because the old ones were the shit.

And also knock it off with the fucking microtransactions and shit. I wouldn’t mind games costing something appropriate for inflation if we were getting complete, high quality games without the expectation that we spend even more money afterwards. As it stands, they’re complaining about the low cost of games while also milking players for every penny they can on top of the purchase price. Fuck these guys.

It’s funny, really, because game elements like that could make for a really neat game if it was done intentionally, but when it’s AI artifacts, it’s awful.

I think the trailer and Steam page makes it pretty clear that this isn’t just aimed at furries. Not that furries won’t jump on it - we will, but it’s not just for furries.

and potentially their brand sponsors

Well, there it is. In-game ads in the form of “user-generated content”, from the sound of it. Also has paid mod vibes.

Hope I’m wrong and it’s actually great.

The last page of this survey is heavy handed and full of leading questions. It feels like you’re less trying to gather research data and more trying to push an agenda; it would not pass scientific review. The fact that I agree with the agenda being pushed doesn’t change my feelings on that.

A better method would have been to ask the question in a neutral way (e.g. ‘Do you believe that storing game cartridges qualifies as preservation?’ or even better, ‘Storing game cartridges qualifies as preservation’ as a statement, with a Strongly Disagree - Strongly Agree scale), then at the end of the survey provide the information you’re providing in the links below each question.

There’s probably already games where AI generated “every pixel”, just not the code that displays those pixels… This headline only implies art, even though it’s pretty clear they meant the whole game, code and all, and without seeing the whole article, we can’t really effectively comment.

In this same vein, Backpack Hero is quite good, too! If you like one, maybe check out the other.

It’s worth noting that Risk of Rain 1 and 2 are very different games (3rd person 3D vs. 2D side scroller), and both are good - so if 2 didn’t grab you, maybe check out 1 and see if that’s more your thing. (The remastered version has a lot of nice QOL stuff and some new game modes and items.)

I got you, fam. It’s not exactly the same - more narrative focused, and slower paced - but it will scratch that same itch.

As someone who just has no interest whatsoever in competitive multiplayer games (even ‘passive’ competitive, like this sounds to be), or live service titles, I feel completely left behind by AAA developers. It’s a good thing the indie scene is so vibrant, or I’d just have to find a new hobby at this point.

Even if there weren’t a million examples of prior art, the fact that patents on game mechanics are even allowed is just awful for the industry as a whole, and we as players should absolutely rail against this. Every game borrows from other games’ ideas and mechanics - I’d bet money that there hasn’t been a single fully “original” game in 20+ years. If companies are allowed to patent every little mechanic (even ones they didn’t come up with), the industry as a whole will just become impossible to operate in.

This would also spawn a Captcha% speedrun category, where the goal is to beat Doom before the Captcha considers itself solved.

Halo Infinite: Post-season 5, battle passes are now free during their introductory season, but cost $5 to unlock afterward

Marvel Rivals: Battle passes will not expire if you bought the $10 Luxury pass during the season

These are not FOMO-less. Marvel Rivals sounds like the worst of the three in that regard. The ‘old’ method incentivized you to skip buying a battle pass if you weren’t going to finish it (because you’d lose rewards); MR’s system gives you a FOMO CTA to make that purchase to stop you from losing rewards.

Compare this to, say, Dead By Daylight, where there’s “seasons” with unlockable rewards, you can get them for free, and you can keep unlocking them after the season ends.

There’s also a wide range of player skill levels to consider. If you aim to make a game not be frustrating for most players, it’s going to be boring for a large percentage of the best players. If you aim to make a game challenging for the best players, it’s going to be unapproachable for most. Different difficulty tiers of the same fight helps to address that but still alienates players if they find even the lower difficulties too challenging. It’s a delicate dance.

Well, this all but guarantees that we’ll see more ridiculously high priced consoles in the future, too. Good going, folks!

it is literally illegal for a CEO to do the right thing if it will cost shareholders

Source?

I never saw any other solid evidence.

It’s all hearsay; anyone with a search engine can find articles making claims but what’s accurate or not is anyone’s guess. It’s all we’ve got to go on until the trial, most likely.