Do you like cool lore? Detailed item descriptions? What about esoteric oddities that you interact with through text? How do you feel about choose-your-own-adventure books? Torment: Tides of Numenera might be the game for you.

Also highly, highly recommend Disco Elysium, but someone already suggested that. I think you would love it.

It was nice crawling different dungeons and then… “Fresh meat” That was the first time in the game where I started to frantically try to just… get the fuck out.

Thanks for the memories. I remember taking turns playing this with my sister and freaking out when we first saw the butcher. Like just being able to use the mouse and keyboard was a challenge it was so scary.

Even comparing it to most modern shooters, I almost never feel as hunted as I did by the human enemies in HL. A big part of that is definitely the level design, but also the enemies in HL are very mobile compared to most games where the action is all happening roughly 180 degrees in front of you.

Also the scripted sequences that were all in-engine were amazing at the time.

We were used to cool things happening in a pre-rendered cut scene before, but with HL1 everything happens from the player’s perspective in real-time while you’re in control of them. Even the opening where you put the crystal in the beam and actually cause shit to go haywire felt like an incredible moment of player agency in the world. Like oh man what did I doooo

EDIT: oh @[email protected] kind of beat me to this point haha

It is dumb as hell yeah. Well, probably smart in a business sense, because it’s an excuse to collect more minute-by-minute user metrics for a seemingly innocent purpose (when really you know it’s just going to be gamed to crank up engagement, and trick people into spending money - ie marketing)

I’m fine with dynamic difficulty, if it’s something that the designers bake into the game, which is already done in many cases.

Agreed. I’ve been using it for years now, and it just feels like what a launcher should be. I’m surprised it’s not been adopted as the default, or even an available mode, since it’s so intuitive.

Disco Elysium. It’s like a rich, dense cake frosted with depravity and layered with melancholy and hope. The VO work combined with the delectable dialogue really can’t be beat. You’ll know within the first minute if it has you.

I can confirm that going in blind is a great way to enjoy it. I played it for my book club, having never seen a trailer, screenshot, or even recalled the text.

SupCom <3

Ah that’s too bad to hear, it felt just right on PS4

Outer Worlds is an actual work of art that still manages to play and feel great.

Also in the 7/10 but satisfying shooter category: Rogue Trooper

I guess I’m talking more about blockchain? I never got too deep into this world. But like a way to hash transactions made with real money in a way that would be harder to commit fraud with. I dunno, maybe accountants already do this some way.

I’m imagining an example where you couldn’t disappear a line item because then the ledger’s hash wouldn’t come out right, and bingo bango, tax evasion charges incoming.

I knew people (well one person; in my developer meetup group) that went deep on the NTF craze, like has an spe avatar unironically, spent a bunch on NFTs, and if they’re telling the truth made bank off of them.

It’s pretty disappointing. I wonder whose money they took.

That arises at least somewhat more organically around a real interest that millions of people have been enjoying and obsessing over for generations. So it’s not fair to say it’s totally arbitrary.

The logo stuff is weird though. That’s definitely more “Veblen” like the high price point is itself a flex and desire for, if not true luxury, then the appearance of opulence.

6444&'"_@@¶&5tyj7tfsdyoohoof

Behold my one of a kind unique string of characters. Me I own this tangible property. But lo! For only 0.42069lol “BTC-lts33” (a REAL and stable currency that is NOT speculative AT ALL) I will maintain a CSV on my server (192.168.6.9/wp-admin/test/test2/myPage.php) I will serve you a guaranteed locally unique identifier (starting at “3” (I’m holding on to the other two strings for a rainy day)) that points to the row with this string, so you can show off that YOU are the sole owner of this totally unique investment property.

This server is guaranteed up, with 100.00000% uptime since this morning

I’m not against this. And as far as I can tell it isn’t a get rich scheme. I mean the tech companies implementing and maintaining it would probably make a killing, but that goes for any enterprise that supports big finance.

God I am not going to miss every art community being flooded with low effort developer art that had no actual artistic merit.

I mean I do developer art, but I wouldn’t try to sell it, let alone sell it as an investment. Fucking rofl

Alright, I definitely will! This looks exactly up my alley.

Similarly, it’s if I really start looking at the scenery. Like zooming in on desks and and where textures meet and stuff to a) see all the worldbuilding details, and b) to see the level designer / env artist’s work up closer.

smh for real. May as well just make our own at this point

How can we stop it?

I disagree with the extent of your warning, but only just. I also originally bounced off of Chrono Cross because it wasn’t what I was expecting (3D Chrono Trigger). Once I went back to it like it was a brand new game, I grew to enjoy it on its own merits.

At least play it long enough to get the nostalgia whenever you hear the music come up on rainwave :p

Gotta say I want to recommend Zelda: LttP too, even though it’s more action-y. One of those games that feels like you’ve really gone on an adventure.

I played the demo and liked it a lot. Beautiful looking game that feels good to control. The only reason I’m not playing the full game is that I feel like I owe Baldur’s Gate III my attention, since I so rarely buy new games :p

The music and general vibe are worth it in their own

Live A Live.

Forget trying to understand the title, just download the demo.

Octopath Traveler to an extent, too.

Oh yeah and the original Golden Sun has a great overall aesthetic, and some really interesting utility abilities, including ones that can be used in towns.

Oh yeah again, also Wild Arms is worth checking out (but not the remaster, I’ve been told). It does some really interesting things, and the plot feels similar. Combat is a bit of a chore, but I found it meditative. Enemy sound effects are tinny and repetitive and battle theme is divisive.

Thank you for the breakdown. I had some vague conception of American free speech protections being pretty intense, but this illustrates the individual distinctions well

Wait what, I thought the US had hate speech laws.

If Nazi gum flapping isn’t that, then I don’t know what is

And a potato could become a bell pepper to save my gulasch. Sadly it won’t because reality doesn’t magically revolve around my belly button …

I love you.

Not the person you were speaking to, but get nationalised or run on donations as a non-profit.

But I do pay more than my share for most fediverse instances that I use (which reminds me, I use this one enough - should probably make my donation regular)

Maybe a bit of an extreme comparison, but it reminds me of when Donald Trump, also in the US, actually got elected president there. I remember thinking he looked quite wan in those early news clips. Like he was shocked to have actually won, and was rapidly having to adjust his expectations of the future.

Yeah this is just the new Society Pages of the rich and famous (ie people whose job is managing your attention).

Even my beloved Paris Marx, of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast (recommended), can’t help themself from constantly crowing about Musk’s latest tort against humanity.

How dare you

Mix of concern, frustration, and what appears to be complex doomer mating rituals

Yeah I’m thankful to have got that advice pretty early in my career. Generally get itchy feet around 3 years now.

We have to go back!

But also legitimately. Like remember how good games would get near the end of a console’s lifecycle? Then a new console generation would drop and the games would look sharp, but also a bit wonky, until enough years has past, and thennn… another new console generation would drop, and the constraints would disappear again. Always too soon, I thought - just as the games were getting truly good again!

A lot of journalists do care, but they also have a job to do and a boss that tells them which articles to write.

Like I don’t care about whatever business my company is competing in, but I’ll keep working for them because they pay me.

I still remember watching this with my friend and saying “imagine when games look like this.”

We still say it to eachother jokingly. Good memory.

Edit: oh actually just watched the video, and I’m only referring to the first part