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.

My understanding (again only based on articles from the past 2+ years that this lawsuit has been in the works) is that it isn’t codified in their agreements at all, but that they can / have either removed games from the store, or removed them from promotion (meaning you could find the game if you searched for it, but it would never show up on the storefront, for instance) in response to games being listed elsewhere cheaper. That’s kind of part of the basis for this lawsuit, by my understanding - I’ve read that they’re using those examples as evidence against Steam that they’re acting anti-competitively.

There’s been a lot of articles and discussion about it since this lawsuit first showed up, and the general gist that I’ve seen is that:

• It’s not codified in their agreements, but
• They can / have in the past either removed products from the Steam store entirely or removed them from curated marketing and promotion in response to the game being listed elsewhere at a lower price.

They seem to handle it on a case by case basis, but in those cases it’s definitely not been restricted only to the sale of Steam keys. They just don’t have any firm legalese to refer to here that I’m aware of.

I haven’t seen the agreement itself, but I’ve never seen anything to lead me to believe it didn’t apply to non-steam key sales. EGS doesn’t sell Steam keys but games still can’t be listed for cheaper on EGS than Steam without violating Steam’s terms, for example.

I really don’t think there’s any way to reasonably argue that Steam should have to give out Steam keys for cheaper sale elsewhere. They’re paying for the servers, they’re paying for the Steam features, they’re paying for the advertising; it stands to reason that people shouldn’t be able to take advantage of that. Even if it was ruled this way, all Steam would have to do is discontinue the free Steam key distribution and instead charge 30% of the game’s price to generate keys, then remove the MFN clause. They’d still get their cut.

I feel like Steam could remove their most favored nation clause (which is what this lawsuit is about) for any storefront that isn’t selling Steam keys specifically, and the amount of sales they’d lose would be effectively a rounding error. I don’t care if a game is 10% cheaper on EGS or itch.io or wherever else; I’m still buying it on Steam because I want to use the services Steam provides. The sole exception is GoG - but even with GoG, I still find it much less reliable than Steam for just being able to get the game working without problems (on linux specifically).

If the product being sold is a Steam key, I don’t think there’s any argument that could stand up against the MFN clause… the fact that Steam allows developers to generate Steam keys for their games for free and sell them elsewhere is pretty generous as it is now.

FromSoft’s games have been on my ‘I will buy anything they release’ list for quite some time, and I’ve never been disappointed with one. There’s not much at this point that would get me to stop buying their stuff on release, but a PlayStation account sign-in requirement on PC would definitely accomplish it.

From another article talking about this:

For years, Sen. Warner, a former tech entrepreneur, has been raising the alarm about rise of hate-fueled content proliferating online, as well as the threat posed by domestic and foreign bad actors circulating disinformation. Recently, he pressed directly for action from Discord, another video game-based social networking site that is hosting violent predatory groups that coerce minors into self-harm and suicide. He has also called attention to the rise of pro-eating disorder content on AI platforms. A leader in the tech space, Sen. Warner has also lead the charge for broad Section 230 reform to allow social media companies to be held accountable for enabling cyber-stalking, harassment, and discrimination on their platforms.

The linked Section 230 Reform details

He’s targeting all kinds of social media, not just gaming platforms.

Seriously; if someone said this about Tiktok, nobody would question it, they’d probably applaud it, but because it’s Steam, everyone immediately jumps in to defend it without understanding or caring to investigate the details at all.