I don’t play them but I am always happy when something happens and it pisses off Nintendo and Nintendo Fanboys/Fangirls.

I used to love Nintendo, but this isnt Iwata’s Nintendo anymore. Now they only care about money, which isnt a shock considering the CEO has a history in financial, but its still disappointing nonetheless.

The Forza franchise is split into two distinct subgenres (kinda like how Gran Turismo used to have two disks: Sim and Arcade):

Forza Motorsport is the realistic simulator. Tire temperatures affecting grip levels of simulation.

Forza Horizon is the arcade racer. It uses Motorsport as a basis for its basic driving physics, but values are tuned or ignored to maximize the arcade factor of driving.

Horizons driving model kinda feels like Need for Speed, games by Criterion, but less mobile oriented. Its also a little similar to Test Drive Unlimited 2, but the grip is a little lowered to make drifting easier in Forza Horizon.

Its not like Mario Kart, Blur, Split Second, or Asphault. You could maybe try a demo to see if you like it, but you will probably have fun with it.

I feel exactly the opposite.

There are plenty of turn-based RPGs and JRPGs that I fell asleep playing that I probably wouldn’t have if I didn’t have to mostly stare at a static screen and menus most of the game. And dont even get me started on random battles.

Turn-based RPGs have repetitive combat loops to me. Same intro, same enemy lineup, same strategy, same music, same victory jingle. Over and over and over. It least in an action oriented game, I can choose where my character is, how I engage with combat, what terrain features I use, etc.

This is why I like Strategic Turn Based games like Fire Emblem and XCOM way more than standard turn based games.

Elden Ring was more RPG-like by avoiding respawning enemies? What RPG are you talking about? Most RPGs respawn enemies right in front of your face, while you are still in their spawn area.

True, but developers from id Software helped Bethesda specifically for Starfield’s gunplay, which is actually fun this time around compared to Fallout 4.

It starts with the gooner games, then always moves to other non-gooner games. History repeats itself.

But you still play as Snake. Sure, Venom Snake, not Solid Snake. But Raiden isnt Snake, hes just Raiden.

Perhaps Raiden is the reason that the MGSV protagonist is called Venom Snake and not something else.

There were a few MGS games that released between MGS2 and MGSV, and all of them IIRC had Snake as the protagonist.

Just to add some context here:

This rug pull was practically universally disliked by almost everyone that played MGS2 when it released. People that played MGS2 and liked that this happened are like, a super turbo minority of the people that played the game at the time. Only in recent years have people said they liked it.

The negative reception was so strong that Hideo Kojima himself in interviews would go on to say that the rug pull of Raiden was his biggest mistake with MGS2, and that he would never do something like that again.

Recommending NFSU2 is a recipe for disaster. You are starting at peak, its always going to be downhill from there.

Nintendo fans are smooth-brained thesedays though. I dont think its console specific, its Nintendo specific.

~ Former Nintendo Game Enjoyer

Businesses started acting like every product ever is a luxury product and people keep paying the higher prices.

The only way to get prices back down as to not buy them.and hope the little businesses survive long enough.

It doesn’t because the game ends up selling poorly almost always.

The shareholders THINK it pleases them in the short term, but they almost always end up displeased.

Honestly, I think you should use them for anti-piracy DRM. Steam’s DRM is easy to crack, and so when we were thinking about how to make our game unpiratable, we just decided to use the Steam Achievements system like a save file. The game just loads the game state based on what achievements the player unlocked. You know, I never talk about this, but I used to work for Blizzard. I was the first second-generation Blizzard employee. But like, I never talk about it, so having worked there really taught me to think outside the box. So yeah, use achievements as DRM. Makes your game unpiratable.

People here really love pouring cold water on this, don’t they?

Starfield wasn’t my favorite, and I was disappointed with quite a few things about the game, but I still enjoy it. At least it isnt permanently tethered to a server that Bethesda can shut off at any moment. Its good to see them.not completely giving up on Starfield, but I do wish they had listened more to feedback and given the game a true 2.0 update that improves it more.

Not exactly the words I would have chosen to say that, but I understand the sentiment.

The only reason I might be okay with this is if this was a way for the platform to try and guarantee that the game actually releases and isn’t just vaporware. I doubt this is the actual reason for it, but that’s the only understandable reason, IMO.

Good. Hope all of Nintendo’s software patents get rejected. Gameplay elements have been ruled to be not protectable. Only things like trade-dressing.

Cloud RAM. Just download more RAM.

It is amazing to me that these prices keep going up and the companies making them are not going out of business. You and I both know that not enough people are buying these for them to survive if they aren’t at profit margins over 100%.

Being unable to emulate PS2/GameCube/Switch in this day and age at $150 USD is a deal breaker. I understand not doing Original Xbox, but the other three are very well developed on Android and Linux. There isn’t a reason that shouldn’t be possible other than “profit margins are too small if we make that possible at $150 USD.”

I mean, the little R36S can run up to N64/PS1/Dreamcast for $30 USD. The next generation up does not warrant a $120 USD price increase.

Yeah, but they actually provided a real service in exchange for that subscription.

Meanwhile Sony pays studios to NOT develop games for other platforms, which is HORRENDOUSLY anti-consumer, and Nintendo I dont even have to talk about.

Microsoft isnt the consumers best friend, but out of the big three they are the least bad.

Wasn’t it found out that this isn’t actually true? Correcting the typo doesn’t result in the AI actually functioning any better, IIRC.

If tall it took as one typo fix, how come Gearbox never fixed it? How long would that fix take, like three seconds?

Which is why I maintain my order of least to most consumer friendly gaming big three is:

Nintendo < Sony < Microsoft

For all its flaws, Microsoft is the leash anti-consumer, because they don’t have exclusives anymore.

Hoping DDR3 prices go up so I can finally sell the 128 GB of RAM I have been saving “just in case” lol

Everyone downvoted me when I said Sony would keep increasing prices when they had no real competition. Nintendo dropped out, and Microsoft seems to be having no interest in competing, so now we are seeing exactly what I said would happen, happen.

Okay look, as much as I hate Nu-Marathon and NeoBungie, it was only a few in-game (most likely placeholder) textures in a beta build of the game. Anyone trying to claim the entire game was stolen has no idea what they are talking about. It’s wrong that it happened but in the bigger picture, it’s a very minor issue compared to other things with other games.

As a side note, and as an artist myself: Artists do not “own” an art style. Marathon’s art style is not stolen. Brutalism in graphic design existed since the late 1990s. Monet doesn’t “own” impressionism, Dali doesn’t “own” surrealism, Warhol doesn’t “own” pop-art. They never have. Anime and manga have been using that art style in their design and marketing for a very long time. Anime being a pretty big influence on Bungie during the time they were making old Marathon, Halo CE, and most obviously, Oni.

To be fair, in driving games, you dont really want to be changing a whole lot about the driving model once everyone agrees its perfect. Good driving mechanics are always good, and bad driving mechanics are always bad. The only thing worse than bad driving mechanics is when the previous game had perfectly fun driving physics and the next game changed it, making it objectively worse.

Which happened to Need for Speed. A fun arcade racer with predictable physics, Underground 2 had perfected the driving model Black Box had made. Slidey enough to make entering a drift feel easy and controllable, but still predictable enough to master over time. Then in Most Wanted they changed the driving model and added insane amounts of grip for some reason, making the driving model feel more like Mario Kart. Then every game after that one got progressively worse, until we land at the absolute bottom of the barrel games made by Criterion, who make all their driving models feel like they came from a mobile game with tilt controls. Like Unbound.

I dont believe a driving game with good and fun driving mechanics needs to really change anything other than the map, music, and adding cars for subsequent games.

Every game must be over-the-shoulder action slop, or nobody will ever buy them!

~ Game Executives

Nintendo definitely learning the wrong lesson from this:

• The Right Lesson: Maybe we shouldn’t released an expensive console, with only a handful of new games and tons of repeat releases that are $70 (and suck) especially in a really bad global economy, and some of those games dont even have a real physical copy, and stop treating our fans like they are literally Hitler because they are passionate about our products.

• The Wrong Lesson: People must not want powerful hardware and physical games anymore.

Save your game first though.

Ending ◬ (white up pointing triangle with dot) came from the 3C3C1D DLC. You likely played the Game of the Yorha edition of the game which had the DLC included.

The true ending though…

The lyrics are designed to evoke a feeling, but not confuse the player with actual lyrics they might understand (especially if the song is playing while characters are talking in-game).

To do this, the songwriter just created nonsense words that made the sound they wanted, and later on called it Chaos Language. That way they only had to record the song once for all localizations. Its not a real language though, because it doesn’t have any grammar rules or anything.

They did sing some songs in multiple real languages though, which typically play during the end credits.

I am the same unless the content added as either years later or is a massive nearly game changing update.

Highly dependant on the game and the content.

NieR Automata has you get 5 endings and see the credits roll at least twice in order to actually get all of the story, and the content is actually very different. Like the credits rolling isnt treated as the end of the game, just a way to break up the pacing.

But if the game is highly repetitive, extremely linear, and exactly the same on subsequent playthroughs? Nah.

I don’t consider them tedious, but I generally dont end up doing all the side content, I just played the game and occasionally did the side quests between main story quests, so I wouldn’t be able to give you a good assessment on that.

For whatever reason eBay prices on the game have spiked dramatically, but you used to be able to get the game disk for Xbox 360 for like, $10. Its backwards compatible.

You could also just download and emulate the PS3 copy of NieR Gestalt for free if you are concerned about not liking it and buy the game later if you do.

Automata was good, but I found myself enjoying NieR (Gestalt, not Replicant) way more. Its older and less refined, but the story was more captivating, and I found the father a more charming character.

Its hard to argue with Russian Tim Curry. He was such a fun pick for that role.

I liked it more. Red Alert 2 was good but I just prefer Generals Zero Hour.

RA2 isnt bad, I just wanted to really limit the list to not repeat a bunch of games from the same series if they werent equally as good IMO (which is why Danganronpa 2 is the only one in its series, for example). I just had more fun with Generals Zero Hour.

Here is my Quality Slop list (I only like them because they are good):

• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
• Metal Gear Solid
• NieR Gestalt
• Test Drive Unlimited 2
• Halo Combat Evolved
• Dark Souls
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
• Half-Life: Opposing Force
• Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
• Silent Hill 2 (the original, not the remake)
• Super Metroid
• Need for Speed Underground 2
• Shenmue 1, 2, and 3 (Shenmue 3 is probably the worst game on this list, but its still pretty good regardless)
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2
• Age of Empires II
• Command & Conquer: Generals - Zero Hour
• Policenauts
• Panzer Dragoon Orta

Each of these have contributed to my high bar of expected quality for games. Most of these games were made on a very tight budget and schedule, with pretty harsh hardware limitations, usually with a small team of less than 100 people, and are the greatest games of all time. Modern game studios have no excuses for the awful quality they launch games in today with more time, money, more people on the dev team, and lack of hardware limitations.

Okay wait, why the DLSS 5 AI kinda cooking with those casting picks though??

As a Shenmue fan, and even one that liked Shenmue III, I would absolutely play that.