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For the uninitiated, the game was banned, not because of the gratuitous violence, extreme drug use, and themes involving fugue states, war crimes and cold war conspiracy,
But because of a scene depicting rape.
Except, the “depiction” was simply a character, from a pixelated top-down view, climbing onto the other character. No nudity, no thrusting - then…
The director yells “CUT!”
Turns out, it was a movie being filmed. So even within the context of the game, it wasn’t rape, it was an abstraction of an abstraction, WITHIN an abstraction.
Ratings board are morons.
As an Aussie, I was lucky to have a friend gift this to me on Steam.
I’m expecting:
- dialogue choices to be binary.
- all NPC’s are voiced by Todd.
- there’s a mandatory 200GB texture pack update on day one.
- the Creation Club is integral to the main story.
- skills are distilled down to STRONG, BENDY, SMART.
- these three skills have a perk tree which is actually just a perk stick with no branches.
- AI assesses whether your constructed town is good enough and won’t let you proceed to the next mission unless you’ve gone to Granny Earl’s house for three consecutive IRL Sunday’s and sent photos of your freshly baked Sweet Roll™ to the Bethesda’s Antarctic game studio (you incur all costs associated with postage) in the middle of Winter (May).
- races outside of Imperial are DLC, as is any skin colour besides white, and any genital options besides “Jewish”.
I always wondered this myself.
I think I remember reading a while ago that apps need to be updated occasionally to comply with .apk guidelines.
This is presumably dependant on which permissions the .apk requests. So a simple calculator app wouldn’t need to be updated, but the calculator plus app, which tracks my blood pressure, how many glasses of water I’ve drank, and my semen count, would need to be updated occasionally to comply with Google’s privacy policies.
But I’m not an app developer, so don’t trust me on a whim.
It feels completely natural to me, but I think it is unintuitive, and games which feature it without explaining it are disadvantaging people with less gaming literacy.
It’s similar to the mechanic in shooting games, where reloading while there is at least one bullet in the gun results in a faster reload (because the gun doesn’t need to be cocked).
It’s realistic, but I feel that it should be ignored, in the same way each bullet from the old mag magically transfers into a new mag.
Games are art. I have full respect for an artist who does not compromise their vision for someone who refuses to engage with the art, on the artists terms.
A lot of people played The Witcher 3 and thought the combat was boring, but never spent time preparing for battle by considering which oils and potions to use - because they didn’t need to. They were playing on easy or normal.
These people robbed themselves of the experience of immersing themselves in the role of a Witcher, and turned each encounter into a button masher.
Imagine being a developer and seeing people shit on your game for ‘unengaging combat’.
Now, sure, you can make the argument that that’s just one element of The Witcher 3, and some people are playing for the story - and fair enough.
But there isn’t anything analogous in the Souls franchise. The gameplay IS bashing your head against a wall for ten hours. You don’t get to just turn down the difficulty, breeze through every boss on the first try, and claim the game is boring.
Sandy is even MORE broken now.
The Apogee variant slows time by 85% for six seconds.
Increases head shot damage, crit chance and crit damage. Each kill extends the sandy and gives stamina.
It’s busted as fuck. Melee is the new OP way to play, and personally, most fun.
Sometimes I miss my “I’m too high to fight you” character. She was fully decked out in all things hacking, including the old style of perk progression - which meant levelling breach protocol to 20 - there are almost not enough terminals in the game to hit 20, seriously.
Imagine this:
Fixer asks you to get a diamond encrusted dildo from the most dangerous gang in the neighbourhood.
You sit outside an enemy building, look at their camera, play a little matching game, ping the camera, highlight the boss top floor and order them to vomit until they die.
You watch as everyone in the building starts throwing up, vomit running down the stairs, the ceiling fan flicking vomit on the walls, basically everywhere except the toilet.
You walk in, grab the dildo, and walk out, there was never a threat of danger.
I’m a day one CP77 player and spent a lot of time in Night City. I’ve made four level 50 characters, read every patch note as it updated, and even fell into the FF06B5 rabbit hole.
The launch wasn’t great, but the negativity was miscalibrated.
The worst part of launch was the previous gen versions, which were functionally unplayable.
Yet most people were hanging shit on visual bugs and physics irregularities. This is an issue since CP77 is supposed to specialise in spectacle and immersion, but was a long way from being “unplayable”.
Outside of one instance, during an emotional scene, when a character died while a gun was clipped through his head, these bugs were funny. It didn’t affect how much fun I had.
The game is in a very good state now. The progression system had a major overhaul since the start of 2.0 and it is a fucking blast!
The game is far more streamlined, they’ve reduced the time spent in the menu, and made cyberware more important.
Perk points are now a lot more balanced.
Previously, if you wanted to play “properly”, you would dump 20 attribute points in Cool for Cold Blood, 18 in Tech to craft legendary items, and 20 into Intelligence/Body/Reflex, depending on your main damage type. It was quite restrictive.
Now the game is pushing you to use each attribute type to level up all five of your skills.
Besides leveling Tech up to 20 (you’re a dipshit if you don’t), and Reflexes to 15 (for air-dash) you can basically do whatever the fuck you want with your stats, and the gameplay is far better for it.
Once you get things set up, you’re zipping around the city like spiderman, sliding up to peoples butts at 70km/h and shoving the funnel of a shotgun into their ass. It’s a good feeling.
The engine is all besides the point, though there are games like Apex Legends which use the Source Engine and are just great.
How would I convince gamers to use my platform instead of Steam?
For starters, act in good faith. For all the issues you raise with Steam, at least they aren’t fighting anyone for exclusivity rights.
Transferring Rocket League and Payday2 to Epic fucked the community so hard they have split the player pool.
They could offer some basic community tools, and features which every other store has had for years.
I was only talking about Epic Game Store, not Unreal.
But on that matter, Valve charges much less for their engine, and is often free for indie devs.
EGS would be grossly profitable if they had a good service, but they don’t because their platform is shit.
“They basically just sell Fortnite and Rocket League”
So, has anything changed in the past 3 years or are they just doing the exact same thing, hoping something would change?
The services are free for the customers though.
30% is and isn’t a lot when you consider everything it entitles you to do as a developer, including high-speed download servers, community tools, advertising, SteamWorks platform etc.
The work valve is doing in development of Proton isn’t an occasional trinket, it’s an ongoing and important project which is helping to defeat the real monopoly, Microsoft.
Also, I’m a patient gamer, Steam sales are frequent enough that I have always paid the best price.
What is there so hard to understand?
They became billionaires without treating their customers like a product.
Enshitification hasn’t reached Valve yet.
They are making important progress in Linux compatibility for free.
Customer support consistently break their own rules to keep customers happy, at the expense of profit.
Their platform offers a lot of great services to customers for free.
Gabe: Hello Handsome, might you procure my services?
Me: What do I have to do?
Gabe: Nothing sordid I assure you. Simply open your wallet, ever so gently, while I humiliate Tim Sweeny
~opens my wallet~
Gabe: Save it for the Steam Sale
cough Michael Jackson cough