I finally got my PS3 emulator up and running, so I’m finally able to play Sly 4 for the first time.

It’s… different from the others. First in art, second on overall feel. The art is changed for a more cartoon aesthetic than comic book, so animation in the 2D cutscenes is more fluid and there are more details on everything (you can see the wrinkles in Sly’s shirt, and the tufts of fur, for instance). The gameplay feels more floaty, like when you jump it looks like you kinda hover for a second before falling back down and it feels a little more weightless than the first three games.

I’m still liking that I get to play more Sly, so I’m not complaining too much.

The sad part for me is that I only know if Intruder, Sub Rosa, etc. because of General Sam, a YouTuber who almost always plays multiplayer games with his friends.

Although he makes it seem fun, and he is absolutely a toxic player, so I was interested in checking out Intruder at one point because of his videos on it. I think it’s still on my wishlist.

Imo that’s how these things go almost 100% of the time.

New unknown game gets a ton of random hype around it insanely fast? Looks pretty jank and kind of barebones? Has some sort of party play/chat mechanic? Must be a YouTuber/streamer game.

Kinda like Lethal Company (and all other games like it), Intruder, Sub Rosa, Perfect Heist; and all those other asset flip type games. Hell even all those “store simulator” games that all look identical fall into this too.

It’s why the story is so flimsy across all those old popular platforming series, they took a “gameplay first” approach.

Look at the story for the Jak games. It’s all convoluted as hell, and there are tons of plotholes and such, but it’s probably one of the best series-lomg stories of those classics. Sly 1 had a clear story, and then when it sold so well that there were actual fans wanting a sequel, they had to come up with a story to justify it. Same goes for Tak, Ty, Ratchet & Clank, and so on.

I’ve been replaying old PS2 platformer classics like Jak & Daxter, Tak, Sly Cooper etc.

Tak has pretty funny humor, if a little childish at times. And it may have not aged well in general (all white people voicing possible island tribespeople that practice a magic/religion called Juju), but it’s still fun and was pretty inventive back then with the cartoon proportions and interactivity with the animals throughout.

Everyone still loves Jak, and a lot of it is due to the art style. Everything in those games is so alien and yet also kind of familiar, but the way they mix the mystical with the sci-fi always intrigued me. It’s kinda like Shadowrun imo.

Playing Sly, I realized there was an abundance of anthro characters in the early 2000s. But the games took inspiration from cartoons and comics and leaned into those aspects and aesthetics heavily. There’s always a sound effect and sound bubble that pops up when you knock out a bad guy, the colors are vibrant and over the top and the stories are too. They live in a weird magical retro-futuristic world with laser guns, jetpacks, super-geniuses able to create mutant monstrosities, immortal cyborg owls that run on pure hate whose body parts can then be repurposed into a multitude of uses (hypnotization, perpetual engines, etc), and so on.

Video games used to be about fun.

“The human mind. Six hundred miles of synaptic fiber, five and a half ounces of cranial fluid, fifteen hundred grams of complex neural matter… A three pound pile of dreams. But I’ll tell you what it really is. It is the ultimate battlefield–and, the ultimate weapon. The wars of this modern age–The Psychic Age-- are all fought somewhere between these damp, curvaceous undulations. From this day forward, you are all Psychic Soldiers. Paranormal Paratroopers! Mental Marines who are about to ship out on the adventure of their lives! THIS IS OUR BEACHHEAD. And this is your landing craft! You shall engage the enemy in his own mentality! You shall chase his dreams, you shall fight his demons, you shall live his nightmares! And those of you who fight well, you will find yourselves on the path to becoming international secret agents. In other words… Psychonauts! The rest of you… WILL DIE.”

Imo (and most other fan’s opinions) you should absolutely start with the OG, if nothing else than to see how gaming has evolved and such.

If you’re feeling it, I’d recommend just jumping into BM. With the original being so fresh in your mind, you’ll really appreciate the work these people put into their remake. It’s so full of love for everything in the original (and a bit of HL2) that it still kinda blows me away with all the little details and such. The scientists and other NPCs all look distinct now and have different personalities and voices, and before shit hits the fan you’ll hear plenty of little banter and idk chat between your coworkers as you make your way to the rest chamber.

There’s also, as a mod for Black Mesa, another team remaking Blue Shift in the new engine and all. They’re not done with the game yet, but what they have is about 3-4 hours worth of story finished (the first 5 or 6 levels I believe), and it’s actually expanded on even more than in Black Mesa or the original Blue Shift. There are more named characters, extra parts added to missions, and it feels like the same care went into remaking Blue Shift as went into making Black Mesa.

There’s also a fun part at the beginning that has an overlap with Black Mesa where you, as Barney, see Gordon go by in the tram, and I think he flips you off in like a teasing playful way.

People did shit like this all the time on reddit. Why are you personally taking offense to this?

I’ve been curious about Lethal Company, but I’m not a streamer and I don’t have friends to play with.

That said there’s another game almost identical to LC called Murky Divers and instead of going around different research stations on different planets, you’re cleaning out research stations underwater.

You have a sub that you use to go around the ocean, and there’s like a radar to help you navigate, avoid creatures and obstacles, and find locations to actually go into. There are all manner of creepy underwater creatures and anomalies to find/avoid, and I’m sure there’s at least one giant sea creature that can come and fuck you up if you’re not careful.

Tbh I didn’t get very far because as soon as I pulled up to a location and got out of the sub, I freaked out and turned the game off. I ended up refunding it because, again, I don’t have friends to play with and I’m not a streamer lol. But it did seem like an interesting spin on the concept.

Legacy of Kain: Defiance. They got actual stage actors and real acting veterans to voice a lot of the major roles in that game. It feels like you’re playing through some epic dark fantasy movie because of it.

Also, it may sound weird, but some of the audio logs in Prototype 2 actually fucked me up because they did such an amazing job. The one that’s stuck with me the most is one you can find fairly early on in the game, where a mom is trying to stop a government soldier from shooting her son because he’s nonverbal (and therefore can’t “prove” he’s not infected), and it’s absolutely gut wrenching. I had to stop playing for a few minutes after I heard because it was so intense. Here’s the recording if any of you were curious.

It’s just NFTs with extra steps.

I remember Pivot… Good times.

The Orville: Interactive Fan Experience. /j

But really though, The Orville show feels like a fantastic homage to classic Trek, and the show itself feels hopeful if that makes sense.

Also the totally free fan game for it on steam is pretty cool. You can explore the entirety of The Orville ship, you can even fly it around different space areas AND you can take a shuttle out for a ride! There are a couple different “scenarios” you can play through such as enemies boarding the ship, and having to make repairs while you’re floating through a conscious nebula that’s talking to you and making horror movie stuff happen.

Also there’s multiplayer, a holodeck with different places you can load up like a bowling alley, and you can customize your own crewmember.

Who actually needs an excuse to play Halo though?

And the two were on almost every western video game from like 2009-2017, so they were everywhere

I haven’t updated discord in like a year at least. It’s still working fine for me.

Because not everyone is going to or wants to drop serious cash for a big set. Some people don’t have the space or whatever the reasoning may be.

Also, imo The Expanse is a bit too adult for Lego to adapt. But they did make an ornithopter from Dune (the new one, complete with a floating Baron Harkonnen minifig), so who knows.

Ninjago is still going strong after like what? 10 years? And it’s a pretty good theme with all kinds of badass builds and part usage. City has never not been a thing since it’s creation, and we’re still regularly getting modulars every year since like 2005. Lego is still churning out tons of their original stuff: the new Neo Space, Dreamzzz, Friends, the aforementioned Ninjago.

Sure they’re making more and more licensed stuff, but I’d honestly “blame” Dimensions and people as a whole. Who else would want to see Lego Ghostbusters or Pokemon or Sonic interact with each other? Fans of those franchises, that’s who. Lego is just giving people what they want.

Idk why this was a whole rant, but hey.

It only took 25 years. I’m not even a pokemon fan but I’m curious what their sets would look like. I have been tempted by a couple of the Mega Bloks sets though, and I even got one of the mystery pokeball sets and ended up getting Bulbasaur.

They’ve been pushing back the end of the world since 3. Every new game since then has been about prolonging the story just a bit more. I was kinda taken out of the whole thing by the ending of Valhalla, where Desmond and Layla’s consciousness basically became digital Adam and Eve.

Plenty of G*mers out there who would gladly just give their wallet over to their favorite developer/publisher. Even here on Lemmy. I even got downvoted for telling someone that no one was forcing them to buy the next new console when it comes out, and they replied that yes they will if their partner finds out about a particular new game. I was flabbergasted.

It doesn’t surprise me at all. In fact I’ve seen other similar comments on other steam games that people like riding the dick of.

ETA: Comment in question

I use the mod that respawns you at the last checkpoint. It’s SOO nice to have.

I just bought Suicide Squad (I know, I know, but it was on sale and I want to experience it at least a little); Pine; and Sniper Elite 2R, 3 and 4.

I’m very excited to get into the Sniper Elite games. I played 5 back when I had Game Pass, but never finished. I figured the others might be just as good.

Idk why you got downvoted. Borderlands 3 for $6 is a pretty good deal. And $16 for the complete edition isn’t bad either. I already own the full collection on steam so I can’t see the price of that, but when I bought it during the last sale I wanna say I spent like maybe $50 on the entire Borderlands series.

There really is a “Lemmy hive mind” starting to form, just like reddit.

You won’t “have to”? No one is making you buy the damn thing in the first place. Imo everyone should wait to buy it until it’s cheaper.

Absolutely. Just boot it up without to rtx to see for yourself

I was debating between the two when I was first looking at them. I guess Session is supposed to be the more “realistic” one, and it’s pretty tough actually. Each stick controls each foot (left stick for left foot, right stick for right foot) but you can of course change the settings to be as arcadey as you want. There’s even a control setting to make it play exactly like Skate 2/3. There aren’t many maps to play in, but the maps that are there are pretty good.

When I first got the game in 2021 or '22, the maps didn’t even have cars or other pedestrians, but they added those in one of the updates in the last couple years (tells you how much I play it lol).

I’ll also say that the music is kinda lacking in the game. Like there are two or three “stations” you can listen to based on genres, and there are only a few songs in each, but the classic “turn the game’s music volume all the way down and pull up a playlist on YouTube/Spotify” move always works.

There’s also Session, which is pretty good

I’ve played Stumble Guys cause there’s a PC port on steam for free.

It’s basically a knockoff of Fall Guys, if that wasn’t obvious. It’s not awful though, it could be a fun time-waster.

But not 3, Reach or ODST?

That’s kinda how I felt too. Maybe if you’re just really good at stealth games it’s easier lol.

I never finished the first two but I’m excited for this.

I mean you can enable “slow mode” in certain channels which puts you on a timer after sending a message. I think it’s configurable too.

Damn. Did it still get put back onto steam? I remember seeing something about it being put back on steam, but I haven’t really looked for it in a while.

Funny enough this is one of the early access games whose discord I follow, but I never pay attention to it

I have no idea how someone could use it for that.

The amount of people who spam messages in the boards is absolutely fucking insane. They’ll do that thing where they make it seem like they’re taking pauses or whatever when they’re putting breaks. Example:

Did you guys know?

That when you need to refill your characters ammo

You can reload by pressing R?

And other shit like that, but way worse and even shorter messages each time. I only use discord to keep up to date with early access games, or some communities that I’m a part of (YouTubers, and multiplayer communities like Project Zomboid servers). My job also uses discord to communicate (we’re a small company but with people around the country).

MX Vs. ATV Unleashed

Something about the early 2000s alt and buttrock that just does it for me.

It’s okay. Palworld exists and it looks pretty good.

I have definitely been using my own legal copies of games to play on PC with PCSX2.

Definitely, totally, ripped the BIOS from my own PS2, as well.

Completely legal here.

It’s an online store where people can buy different model packs for themselves to use in their own projects/games.

If you look at Gedonia, The Bloodline, Perfect Heist (and many more); these are all indie games that use some of the same models outright, and the entire art style as a whole, all from Synty.

All their models are those polygon ones.