I think you meant “bottom to top”. But yes, that does change the tone a bit.

It’s so weird to me that no one uses the term “slowdown” any more. Lag and latency meant networking delays back in the days you’re talking about. Not a complaint, just an observation that I’ve been wondering about the last few years.

But yeah, as others said, slowdown/lag was pretty common. I immediately think of the ninjas jumping out of the water in TMNT3, the beginning of Top Man’s stage in Mega Man 3, and the last boss of The Guardian Legend, but there were many more. Early 3d is shocking too, with more sub-30-fps games than you remember. Some called themselves at 20, even. [Edit: Now that I think about it, even some NES games capped at 20. Strange times.]

You acknowledge that if you fail to comply with the foregoing restrictions Nintendo may render the Nintendo Account Services and/or the applicable Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part.

It seems hard to believe, but that’s the threat being made. Time will tell whether that’s bluster or if they’re really prepared to do so.

IGN owns Humble.

E.T.

Yes really. I played it all the time as a kid and didn’t think it was any more difficult or abstract than the rest of the 2600’s catalogue. Granted, we kept the manual, which made a huge difference in understanding and enjoying its bizarre logic, but still. I had no idea it was so hated until at least a decade later.

With all Unity’s layoffs over the last couple years, I can’t help but wonder if they turned to AI and it erroneously reported about non-existent employees and incorrect licenses.

Kinda. The website was inactive for a few years there, and only recently started updating again. The author was focusing on Patreon, which was reportedly porn of the VGCats characters.

He confirmed the joycons are not hall effect, but didn’t specify whether the pro controller is.

I’d go with Bob Maloogaloogaloogaloogalooga.

As far as completion: I managed to 100% Mirage in 50 hours, and part of that was spent aimlessly exploring. I’m sure it could be done faster. Of course, it’s also the weakest entry in the series in a while, and the easiest to skip.

I feel you on Valhalla. 300+ hours and I still had side stuff unfinished.

Whoa. I had given up on ever getting a third Styx. Great news. I just hope they learned the lesson from the second game not to shove in a bunch of irreverent meta-humor that just didn’t fit.

The article that OP was trying to link to: https://pkinsight.com/assassins-creed-shadows-story/

Starting with tomorrow’s release of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 for PC, we’re working to add more benefits to playing with an account for PlayStation Network. The Last of Us Part II Remastered (coming April 3, 2025), in addition to God of War Ragnarök and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, will all soon be adding in-game content unlocks for PlayStation Network account users.

“Working to” and “soon be adding” makes it sound like they haven’t gone live with the patches for those games quite yet.

No joke, this year’s CoD is the 21st game in the series. (Main series, that is. I don’t even want to know what the grand total including spinoffs/handheld/mobile is.)

Martin Hollis, but Doak was co-designer. https://www.mobygames.com/game/4034/perfect-dark/credits/n64/

(Also it’s crazy how short credits were back then. I left a Ubisoft credit scroll going a few years ago and I swear it took 45 minutes.)

The site seems to be focused on tabletop and board games, so I guess they assumed their target audience already knew what it meant.

Are you sure about Giant Bomb? AFAIK Jess, Jason, and Bailey were all laid off by Fandom. The GB crew even spoke about being caught off-guard both times, and how bad they thought those layoff decisions were.

I believe the game showed pronouns on the character select screen. That’s all it takes to make certain people mad, unfortunately.

Cool. Reminds me of kkrieger from…20 years ago? Where’d that time go.

Scam. Note the low user score too, and user reviews saying how bad the app is. The official site is Deltarune.com. if it’s not listed there (which this isn’t), don’t trust it.

Pong is over 50. For that matter, Tennis for Two is coming up on 70.

I hate the term “Quadruple-A”. The entire point of Triple-A was to be the biggest of the big. There’s no cap on that size.

Pac-Man on the Atari 2600. I understand the complaints about that port, but I’ll always have a soft spot for it for getting me into the hobby way back when.

They have Doom and Wolfenstein too, and series they’ve seemingly abandoned like Dishonored and Evil Within. They’ve tried to expand to other games but have mixed results at best: HiFi Rush was an unexpected hit early this year, but Redfall was…well, not. The hype on Starfield fizzled pretty quickly too.

Ghostwire sadly got middling review scores. It had a promising reveal a couple years back, then spent a while in troubled development before releasing as a fairly basic open world game.

I’m confused why Kotaku mentioning next gen in the title when Rockstar only commented on current generation PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Because they’re still referring to PS5 and XSX as “next gen”, which is ridiculous this far into a generation. I’m glad even their own commenters are calling that out.

I more meant the narrow intersection of 2 larger genres that rarely cross over, particularly these days.

Though having said that, I do feel like the only person still talking about them anymore. It’s so rare to see them brought up in casual conversations outside their dedicated Steam forums.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. From the little-known “stealth tactics” micro-genre. It really felt like the culmination of what the studio learned from their previous few games. It took some familiar abilities from all the way back to the original Desperados 20 years ago, then added several brand new ones that almost feel OP and make each character unique. Plus if you have a checklist-oriented brain, there are so many optional objectives encouraging you to replay missions in different ways.

I understand some fans weren’t huge on the reuse of levels, but the missions either use different parts of them or have you approach familiar guard setups from completely different directions, keeping them feeling fresh (at least to me).

It’s a real shame developer Mimimi is closing down, though I’m glad they get to wind down gradually and on their own terms. I’m so used to companies trying a new project, running out of money, and closing suddenly.

D4 was the first of their games to charge extra for early access by attaching it to premium editions.

Ever heard of Spiderweb Software? They’ve been putting out lo-fi old-school cRPGs for nearly 30 years now. Take a look at Avernum: Escape from the Pit (a remake of their first game, Exile) and see if that scratches the same itch.

Aw, not Beamdog. :( They made all those enhanced editions classic D&D games like Baldur’s Gate 1 + 2 and Planescape Torment. I didn’t realize they were under Aspyr, which has had serious issues itself lately, not to mention the ongoing money issues at Embracer. We’re going to hear a bunch more stories like this over the next year, aren’t we.

It’s when there’s a disconnect between the storytelling and the gameplay. Usual example is Uncharted or the last Tomb Raider reboot: the main character wrings their hands over the possibility of having to kill a person, but the gameplay is you mowing down an army.

Bethesda put out a long video around Summer Game Fest that spent 45 minutes showing most of the gameplay systems in the game. It was honestly a bit overwhelming.

Reviewers are quiet because the NDA is still active. It should end sometime today (Aug 31).

Are they really describing Valhalla as a 100-hour game? I spent that long on Origins, and Valhalla has way more to it.

But overall a shorter AC game sounds great. I miss the days when even going for 100% took 45 hours instead of triple digits.

After Sony getting all the concessions they could, the CoD deal’s finally done. No clear news yet on whether it’s the 10 year deal MS has been offering around to everyone else.

My favorite Reddit app for several years now. Great news.