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Digital Molecular Matter, the DMM you mentioned in Force Unleashed, is just as interesting IMO. It calculated how objects would break under various types of stress and produced some of the best and most realistic destruction in gaming. It even simulated wood splintering vertically when twisted!
I’m guessing it had similar problems to Euphoria since I haven’t seen it mentioned since.
I hope future installments steal from some of their competitors. A few of them (I think Jagged Alliance 3 and some Valkyria game on consoles?) have a system where aiming is done in first person using a reticle that displays a large circle the shot is guaranteed to land within and a smaller circle with an x% chance of it landing within.
It doesn’t make the game any easier in most situations, but it feels a million times better when you can visualize the exact odds and see how you could possibly miss before you commit, plus you no longer need to worry about missing point-blank shots just because the RNG hates you.
I’m in the middle of a playthrough right now, and while I’m enjoying it (I originally came to this thread to post about Remnant 2, then read your comment and realized I agreed with every single thing you said), it’s frustrating how they chose to design things. The games had great intentions held back by poor implementation.
They wanted to make the game replayable, but they did so by artificially limiting what you could encounter in a single playthrough. For completionists this is torture. For one-and-done players it could be a deal breaker.
They wanted endless exploration, but the random maps make exploring unrewarding. I lost count of the number of interesting map features that ended up being completely empty aside from common enemies and some smashable pots (which are empty 90% of the time and drop a paltry amount of basic currency when they aren’t). Remnant 2 is at least way better about this than the first, where the maps were a chore to get through.
They knew one of people’s favorite things about Souls games is piecing things together from obscure clues, so designed the game in a way that the entire playerbase would work together to learn how to unlock everything. The downside is that obtaining many basic things like classes and gear requires ARG-level shenanigans (plus a hefty dose of luck), and if you don’t use a wiki you’ll miss some of the game’s best content.
And the constant hordes you mentioned are a result of the game needing to drip-feed ammo drops to the player since most guns can burn through your entire reserve in under a minute of fighting, especially against the bullet sponge bosses. That Engineer archetype I linked to in my first comment has a mechanic where it regenerates ammo for its special weapons over time when they’re not in use - something like that (or the first Mass Effect’s heat mechanics) would have been preferable if they wanted to force players to swap weapons from time to time rather than get complacent. They clearly played with these ideas during development since there are a few weapon mods and archetype powers that work like that.
I love the gameplay, the lore, the characters, the visual and sound design, hell nearly everything save the parts I complained about, but I’m left with the unpleasant suspicion that these games would have been significantly better if they dropped half of what made them unique in the first place.
Yeah, Microsoft kept the publishing rights to the first game and Tango gets nothing if you buy it.
I don’t know if they still do it, but Microsoft used to give a free month of Game Pass to entice new signups. If that offer’s still open, you could grab it and play the game without giving them a cent.
The Remnant games are a completionist’s nightmare. Want a specific weapon or bit of kit for your build? You need to hope the right world shows up early (three of the worlds switch their order around each playthrough, so based on luck a specific world could be the first you go to after the tutorial, or it could only show up right before endgame), hope the right main quest for that world is picked (each world has two mutually exclusive storylines), hope the side quest and/or dungeon that drops that item is generated, hope the tile it spawns in is placed on the map (usually but not always guaranteed), hope you don’t miss it entirely due to 90% of the world looking identical… and if it’s dropped by an optional boss, you even have to hope that boss is picked from the pool of choices. It’s insane how random it all is.
And it’s not just gear. As you noted, the archetypes (your character classes) are also gated this way, plus have absolutely ridiculous unlock criteria to boot. Have fun finding the archetype that requires a leap of faith off a random border of a specific map into an opaque cloud of poison, then a second blind drop immediately after to grab another item before you choke to death! Don’t worry if you didn’t know about it, it’s only the best archetype for fighting bosses as a solo player. Better hope that world showed up early in your playthrough and you are the type of player who’s okay dying repeatedly while exploring - which, as this is a Souls-like, revives the dozens of enemies between the last checkpoint and the spot you died*.
One of the archetypes was only found through data mining, the unlock criteria was so obscure. I shouldn’t need out-of-game knowledge and to pass several dice rolls in a row just to have a chance at getting to content I enjoy.
It’s telling that the class dedicated to exploration and level grinding is unlocked by beating the game. You’re expected to play through the campaign several times to see everything, but since it’s all random you’re just as likely to roll stuff you’ve already done. Which the developers clearly realized since you can roll individual worlds as side adventures.
* Though at least one thing that sets it apart from other Souls-likes is that you don’t drop or lose anything on death. However, they compensated for that by making currency drops a miniscule fraction of what they are in other games in the genre, necessitating even more grinding.
Edit: and I actually like Remnant 1 and 2. The gameplay and story are good, the worlds are gorgeous, and the voice acting is phenomenal, but it’s all dragged down by the random generation mechanics. At least 2 is a solid upgrade on that front - the first game felt far more empty and lifeless.
Hi-Fi Rush really is a nearly perfect game. Everything from the gameplay to the art style to the animation to the writing is just… *chef’s kiss*
Made me even more mad over everything that happened to Tango Gameworks (and, frankly, the game industry for the past decade or so)
Fortunately for Tango Gameworks, they did find a buyer (Krafton) after Microsoft cut them loose, and they kept the IP and plan for more Hi-Fi Rush content.
Let’s hope the new owners treat them better.
It’s part of a popular franchise, mostly known in the West due to the NES game River City Ransom (which this is a sequel to/spinoff of). It reviewed well and is popular among fans of beat-em-ups.
Embracer is also splitting into three separate companies to shed the tainted Embracer name, all still owned and run by Wingefors of course.
Asmodee Group (for board games) and Coffee Stain Publishing (for indie games) are the only two with official names last I heard. The unnamed third is the big one and Embracer’s direct successor, but I guess they’re delaying naming it to minimize bad press associated with the new name.
I loved Morrowind’s vague directions, they felt so authentic - like visiting a small town and getting directions from a local. Even a basic fetch quest felt like a journey since you had to check your journal and follow what the questgiver said or you’d get hopelessly lost.
Navigating by landmarks needs to be in more games. There have been a bunch of games since that let you turn off quest markers and item glows, but without any instructions all that leads to is the player wandering randomly until they stumble upon their destination.
It must have been surreal for Pratchett meeting Emma in person at the Snuff launch party. Since she voices the character herself, it must have been like meeting two separate friends at once - his writing correspondent and research partner, Emma, and his virtual guide/friend in Vilja.
That feels like a scene with the sort of bizarre, semi-irrational emotional undertones that Terry himself would often write about. I wish he was still around to ask how it felt.
I wish I could parse news coming out of China and tell which parts are jingoistic propaganda and which are actual news. They’ve leaned heavily on the narrative of Taiwan being a part of China and any invasion being necessary to bring them back into the fold, which is… honestly kind of terrifying. Invading for nationalistic reasons means it could happen even if it makes no sense and harms both parties more than either gains. See Ukraine for how that could shake out, except Taiwan is better defended and their allies have even more reasons to support them.
As for the chip side of things, it’s an open secret that Taiwan has their fabrication plants rigged to blow so the mainland can’t get their hands on them. A modern fab requires several years, multiple billions of dollars, and some extremely niche, cutting edge technologies and construction processes to build, and any damage renders them useless. There’s no credible way China obtains the fabs intact short of a coup or immediate surrender, or infiltration and sabotage on a level that they’d be making spy movies about it for decades to come.
Invading would cripple global chip production (TSMC produces roughly half the global supply, and more importantly the vast majority of high-end, nanometer-scale chips used by computers), crater Taiwan’s economy (along with everyone else’s, as microchips are the lifeblood of the Information Age), alienate the world (possibly leading to a major conflict), and accomplish nothing beyond a feather in the CCCP’s hat.
China has been building their own fabrication plants but they are still decades behind in the precision race, and I doubt they can meet even their own needs yet. Even if they press-ganged Taiwanese experts to restart their industry it’d take decades to bear fruit, if ever. Invading Taiwan would harm then just as much as it would the rest of the world.
And the worst part is an invasion seems to be a credible prediction.
Chinese authorities [accused] the DPP of selling out to the West in exchange for support for independence.
And yet my first thought was that this was a move by the US to obtain Taiwan’s best-in-world fabrication technology in case China goes through with an invasion in the next few years. So really China should be happy about this!
Existing contracts, a lack of infrastructure, and the cost of shipping and insurance would be my guess. Or simply just the economies of scale making it impossible for anyone other than a major retailer to do it.
Retailers can afford to lose a card or two to damage out of each large order (and usually make it back through upselling warranties that customers rarely use); the many individual packages with direct selling would make it far more likely some of them would end up damaged during shipping at AMD’s expense, and would be more expensive to ship than large bulk orders to boot. It’s far more economical to bulk ship to a distributor and let them do all the work.
Besides, would you trust GPU vendors with your deliveries? The “bad drivers” jokes write themselves!
I’d also give GameStop as an example. Even years after digital media took over, they still had significant influence over publishers, up to dictating advertising and release schedules. Partly due to contracts preventing publishers from pulling away, but largely because a lot of people only buy in stores - most significantly, gift-givers and others who don’t know anything about what they’re buying and need an employee to guide them. Holidays alone kept GameStop in the black for years after Steam/Live/PSN dominated the marketplace.
With graphics cards, I’d be willing to bet most people buying them know very little about their choices and need someone to guide them. Enthusiasts are the minority.
This seems pretty normal to me. Isn’t needing to remove copyrighted files when asked by the holder how it already worked?
It’s better than content hosts being held liable by default. Public file sharing would be a non-starter without a safe harbor provision (where the host is only liable if they don’t remove items they’re made aware of).
It sounds like they didn’t, but apparently Microsoft forgot to put together a contract for further work they were doing for the Master Chief Collection, so they were able to hold the MCC port of Halo Anniversary hostage contingent on Microsoft removing the clauses that had blocked royalties in their original contract. So they did get royalties for that port that amounted to tens of millions of dollars, but nothing for their original work.
Agreed. Dishonored came close, but also punished you for fighting lethally (which was 90% of your kit) so your melee options were limited to stealth finishers if you wanted the best ending. Mount & Blade was another decent try but I never loved its melee mechanics.
Dark Messiah also had the best spiders ever. It’s been nearly twenty years and nobody’s managed to top its implementation of one of humanity’s primal fears.
I used to play through the Baldur’s Gate trilogy every few years. Haven’t done that in a decade because I look at the three hundred hour playthrough time and know it’ll never happen.
Edit: “Trilogy” being what fans called BG1+2 plus the Throne of Bhaal expansion to 2. It’s kind of weird now that there’s an actual Baldur’s Gate 3.
Heroic is the fun kind of hard (most of the time). It at least feels like someone playtested it. Legendary in Halo 2 however is just brutally unfair, and even if you play perfectly it’s completely down to random chance whether you’ll succeed. As in you’re literally at the mercy of RNG in the enemy AI deciding whether you’ll be instakilled with no possible defense. Those fucking Jackal snipers…
And it’s even worse in co-op because you need to restart from the last checkpoint if either player dies, whereas on other difficulties (or Legendary in the other games) the other player can continue playing and you’ll respawn if they make it to a safe area. That one change makes co-op controller-snappingly frustrating.
Beating it in multiplayer is a legit praiseworthy achievement. Either that or a sign of deep masochism.
I finally started a blind playthrough of Dave the Diver after letting it sit in my backlog for ages. I’m not that far in, but it’s great so far. The core game loop is fun and relaxing and the characters are all memorable.
And the over the top pixel art cutscenes, man. Worth the price for those alone.
Hey, at least they added inventory sorting!
You know, after a decade of people asking for it. And without fixing the several fundamental design flaws that made the inventory a nightmare to use without sorting in the first place.
But at least they thinly papered over one of the game’s most hated bits!
The Elder Scrolls, infamously. Since they are open-world games, they use heavy level scaling so you can explore wherever you want from the very beginning.
It was alright in Morrowind. There, your level just controlled which enemies appeared, so you wouldn’t encounter high-tier daedra in the overworld until your level was in the teens and you actually stood a chance.
Oblivion utterly fucked it up by having everything scale to your level. You could revisit the starting area and a normal bandit would be wearing a full set of magical heavy plate worth tens of thousands of gold while demanding you hand over twenty coins to pass. Combine that with a weird player leveling system that punished you for picking non-combat skills or leveling up as soon as you could, and people loathed Oblivion’s leveling mechanics.
Skyrim’s scaling was somewhere in the middle, which lead to combat being inoffensively bland the whole way through.
I think Blackwater renamed to avoid tarnishing whoever was hiring them, not because they themselves disliked their reputation. If their employment wasn’t at the mercy of elected officials who have to care about optics, I bet they’d still be parading around their old name with pride.
It’s been decades and the first name that pops into my head when someone says ‘PMC’ is still ‘Blackwater’. Do you have any idea how much war crime they’ll need to do to get back that level of brand recognition?
Nah, it’s just the most horny that are also motivated enough to make the mod. There are plenty of others for other games.
Between paid commissions and putting downloads behind affiliate links (later replaced with Patreons), they were also a way for horny teenagers to make a lot of money. Porn and furries (and furry porn) apparently bring out the big spenders.
Shivering Isles rivals Morrowind in my mind. It has a strange and unique setting and most of the content is incredibly well-written, which contrasts sharply with the standard medieval setting of baseline Oblivion (mandatory reminder that Cyrodiil was supposed to be a rainforest, but the devs retconned it to make development easier).
The other expansion, Knights of the Nine, was just a bunch of fetch quests to unlock an armor set and was disappointing in comparison to even the base game (though at least the final boss fight was cool). It also put behavioral tracking on the DLC’s rewards that would disable them if your character gained infamy, forcing you to repeat a bunch of boring travel quests to fix them whenever this happened. There’s a reason KotN never comes up in discussions about the game.