Only when you run out of breath.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA inhale

I could, it’s not that difficult to imagine. Lots of companies have mandated their own account systems for console games, too.

Sadly I think this is the new normal. You could buy a decent GPU, or you could buy an entire game console. Unless you have some other reason to need a strong PC, it just doesn’t seem worth the investment.

At least Intel are trying to keep their prices low. Until they either catch on, in which case they’ll raise prices to match, or they fade out and leave everyone with unsupported hardware.

Looking at that one, they have it labeled as “showcase” so they’ll probably do a limited collection of content in the game to demonstrate particular tricks and strategies but not the whole thing.

It won by being a well-made, fun game. That’s really all there is. Exclusivity limits audience but it doesn’t affect quality.

Yeah, it’s hard to keep track after they quickly abandoned the numbered naming scheme after 2. And I think that was partly because people were confused anyways by the un-numbered prequel featuring the same setting and cast of characters, while the numbered sequel was almost entirely separate.

(Caveat: I have not played Double Exposure yet so I am not sure how directly connected it is to the first game) The titles are disconnected enough that anyone can basically just jump into the series with any title at any time, the only exception being the first game and Before the Storm, since they’re directly connected. I’ve heard it said that those two can still be appreciated in either release order or chronological order, but would probably be best served played one right after the other either way.

The only other connections I know of are:

• Life is Strange 2 - A character from the original game and Before the Storm plays a minor role in the story, but context is not required to understand the plot.

• Life is Strange: True Colors - A character from Before the Storm features prominently in the story, but context is also not required to understand the main plot. However, this character has a DLC story that I haven’t played, so I don’t know if that ties in more to Before the Storm than True Colors alone does.

The series is still decently popular, though the newest is the lowest rated one yet. There is also more than one developer involved. Here’s a short list of the main titles, developer, and other notes listed below for each:

Life is Strange (2015)

• The original game.
• Takes place in 2013.
• Developed by Dontnod.
• Released in chapters.
• Remastered in 2022 by Deck Nine.
• 81 on OpenCritic.

Life is Strange: Before the Storm (2017)

• Prequel to Life is Strange.
• Features much of the Life is Strange cast.
• Takes place in 2010.
• Developed by Deck Nine.
• Released in chapters.
• Remastered in 2022 by Deck Nine.
• 80 on OpenCritic.

Life is Strange 2 (2018-2019)

• Sequel to Life is Strange.
• Features a new cast of characters.
• Takes place in 2016-2017.
• Developed by Dontnod.
• Released in chapters.
• 76 on OpenCritic.

Life is Strange: True Colors (2021)

• Sequel to Life is Strange 2.
• Features a new cast of characters.
• Takes place in 2019.
• Developed by Deck Nine.
• Released in its entirety.
• 81 on OpenCritic.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure (2024)

• Sequel to Life is Strange: True Colors.
• Stars the original protagonist of Life is Strange.
• Takes place in 2023.
• Developed by Deck Nine.
• Released in its entirety.
• 71 on OpenCritic.

Same experience here. On the website, the left side never fully matched either shade on the right side to me, appearing closer to the bottom but always somewhere in between most of the time. But when I view the screenshot linked above in my mobile app for Lemmy, it looks a lot closer to the top than the bottom, but varies a bit based on how much I zoom in (almost like moire patterns).

As someone who has not played Silent Hill 2 and likely never will…what’s under the blanket?

It’s like how back when the Euro or the Pound were worth nearly 2x what the dollar was, a new device or piece of hardware would sell for $399/€399/£399.

I can’t believe they would have the audacity to put the world’s only AAAA game on a bad game list.

Doesn’t necessarily need to be development staff, though. They could have just as easily set it up as their HR office with just a couple employees.

It’s an Irish site and so they probably want to market this as a success for Ireland and not necessarily that a Belgium-based studio is just using their Ireland branch office for special tax status.

It’s not just a shell company though, as the article highlights they do have their own development staff there.

Microsoft had a lineup of games this year?

I realized this idea long, long ago, when Rare made Banjo-Tooie.

Banjo-Kazooie was a fun game. You unlock worlds, go to the world, collect 100% of all there is to collect, then continue.

Banjo-Tooie, its sequel, wanted to be bigger and better in every way. Sprawling open world hub, much larger worlds with more sub-zones, interconnectivity between worlds, more things to unlock, more things to do, etc. etc.

And I think, despite having so much more, it was a worse game for it. You go to a new world but find there’s a lot you can’t do yet because you didn’t unlock an ability that comes later on. You push a button in one world and then something happens in another, but now you have to backtrack through the sprawling overworld and large world maps to get there.

And this was just a pair of games made for the Nintendo 64, before the concept of “open world” had really even taken off.

But it demonstrated to me that bigger was not always better, and having more to do did not make it a better game if it wasn’t as enjoyable.

Early open world games were fairly small, and the natural desire for people who have seen everything becomes “I wish there was more,” but in practice it ends up typically being that they take the same amount of stuff and divide it up over a larger area, or they fill the world with tedium just for the sake of having something to do.

When looking at the collectibles and activities on a world map like Genshin Impact, it’s basically sensory overload with how much there is to do.

But almost all of that is garbage. And this is just a fraction of one region among several. Go here, do this time trial, shoot these balloons, follow this spirit, solve this logic puzzle, and then loot your pittance of gatcha currency so you can try to win your next waifu or husbando before time runs out.

And don’t forget to do your dailies!

If a game has a large world, it needs to act in service to its design. It needs to be fun to exist in and travel through, not tedious. It needs to have enough stuff to do that keep it from feeling empty, but not so much stuff that it makes it hard to find anything worthwhile. And it needs to give enough ability for the player to make their own fun, to act as the balance on that tightrope walk between not-enough and too-much.

Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom are the most recent games that seemed to properly scratch an open world itch for me. While they weren’t perfect, the way they managed to really incorporate the open world as its own sort of puzzle to solve, in ways that Genshin Impact failed to properly emulate, made them more enjoyable as an open world than most other games in that genre I’ve played in recent memory.

But then those sorts of countries usually have law enforcement that likes taking large amounts of “financial incentives” to do whatever a company like Nintendo wants them to do.

In a world that is controlled almost entirely by heteronormativity, policing straight representation in a queer-friendly game made by a queer developer does not seem like an equivalent situation at all.

Filed before, updated and approved after.

It definitely will. Too many games are no longer 100% offline or small enough to load it all to RAM. Even for games that can be taken offline to play, it would mean the feature would only be able to work in “offline mode” or the developers would need to find some way to align it with the design of their other systems.

Or more likely, as with other features Sony uses as selling points like their recently discontinued “Resume Activity” cards, it remains optional and no developers opt to implement it because it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

I mean, sure, they have the right, insomuch as someone can buy a game on disc and use it as a coaster I guess. But it ruins the point of it, in my opinion.

I’m not saying people are wrong to enjoy media and spend money however they want, but it’s like a concert venue installing fancy couches to put in the lobby for people who buy tickets to a show but don’t want to actually watch it. It just doesn’t seem worth it.

Would be better to watch a Let’s Play, in my opinion. I don’t know why someone would want to play a game only to engage with none of its core gameplay features.

Doesn’t seem like a good sell if they do it that way, though. Let’s invest money and time into this feature that we will disincentivise people from doing by reducing their rewards if they use it.

Works for people doing these things as a hobby project and accounting for functionality that currently exists, but not great for a corporation that would need to convince devs to implement the feature into their games and design around it.

Imagine just rewinding in Elden Ring? No more consequence for death, just un-lose your souls and dodge better without actually learning the tells.

What would be the point?

Borderlands being on the list of “Best game adaptations” is some kind of joke

I’ve seen a few valid criticisms, which I get. It’s hard to make a choice-driven narrative in the post-BG3 market and not get held to a higher standard. “Written by committee” is one such descriptor I’ve heard.

For me, as a fan of Dragon Age: Origins, I also can’t say I prefer the dip into the actiony, grindy sort of combat mechanics the game appears to have now.

There’s probably a reason why people apparently like her. Or two, actually.

I bought a PS4 pro back in the day but am giving this one a pass.

I’m all for incremental mid-gen upgrades, but not at that price point. If it can’t be priced competitively with the prices people have been paying, then it should not be made until the hardware they want meets that price point.

Should have made it $499 and drop the base price of the PS5 to $399.

Journey

Gotta get that daily login bonus in [insert live service game here].

Surprised it’s not higher. I would have thought more than 2% of people on Steam were using Steam Deck.

Agreed. I remember there being some controversy around including figures in the game like Poundmaker, whose major mark in history was advocating against the colonial practices his people were submitted to.

Forcing anti-colonial figures to compete in the colonial model of success just doesn’t seem right.

Surely this will be the movie to break Lionsgate’s streak of complete flops.

Seriously, I don’t get it. If a project makes its budget back, it’s a success. Maybe it would also be good if they didn’t lay off so many developers between projects; for each project that pays for itself, even if it doesn’t provide dump trucks of profit and value for shareholders, the developers still get the experience of another successful project under their belts and that talent can be nurtured into greater success for future projects.

But the Sony implementation wasn’t really meant to take you back to where you were previously, it was meant to take you to specific predefined starting points, is all. Both meant to be “time savers” of a sort but different strategies were used. One clearly didn’t work as well as the other.

While I don’t believe the PS5 has any feature that is up to snuff with quick resume, just wanted to mention that I think this feature was a bit different in function. It was more like a shortcut to specific things within a game, such as if you wanted to just go straight into a multiplayer match or to a specific level of a game, you’d use one of these activity cards, the game boots up, and there’d be minimal to no menus to navigate through. Just launch direct to gameplay or as close to it as possible.

I don’t believe many games used it, though. Not even all of Sony’s own offerings.

They probably should have thought longer about the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 before burning their bridge with Larian.

It wasn’t their IP that made it succeed, it was the quality of the developer. D&D as a brand is worthless if they just sell it to the highest bidder and don’t give a damn about quality.

The BioShock logo (and the art of the game itself) uses an art deco style that was relatively commonplace around the early 1900’s.

Whether this game’s usage of that style is a deliberate move or if it’s just borrowing from a shared aesthetic, who can say.

Super Mario Wonder was also a big one. Critically acclaimed, too.

You joke but I would kill for a new Kirby Air Ride game.

You wouldn’t believe my disappointment when they had a Nintendo Direct years ago and threw a “one more thing” at the end which opened with Kirby Air Ride music and Kirby riding in on the warp star, only for it to be a Smash Bros character reveal. The video they put on YouTube after the fact opened with the Smash logo, but it didn’t during the Nintendo Direct.

Shit, Ben Starr? I’m in.