What’s a reasonable price for 250+ hours of unique (not roguelike/proc gen) gameplay with AAA level production values? Just curious, I’m not sure what my own answer would be.

That’s unfortunate. It sounds like they recognized the burnout, that their new project was poorly scoped and would not be completed without further damaging personal relationships, so they pulled the plug. A healthy decision IMO. I wonder if any other small developers following up an initial big success need to learn from this? 🍒

Woah CrossCode looks right up my alley. How have I missed that for the past… 6 years?!? Thanks!

I don’t know what you mean “I’ve had that unplayed game for 17 years,” I’m going to play it next, (after this one I’m about to buy replaying this old one for the fifth time.)

😭

I went full Leo pointing meme when Nameless King showed up. Always loved that fight.

DS3 really nails that balance. Mostly linear but usually has some sort of side option if you need a break from your current wall of a boss. Playable end to end without devoting like 100 hours. It also comes after Bloodborne where From nailed down more fun active combat vs. relying on a shield, and before Elden Ring where they went hard on crazy delayed boss attacks.

These days DS3 is probably my favorite of the series overall.

It’s all layers of management from the C-suite down. There’s plenty of bad middle management who can’t quantify their subordinates’ output beyond “well, they all appear to be at their desks and working as I pass by on my way to the next pointless meeting.”

The X3 games (Reunion/Terran Conflict/Albion Prelude) would be one game with DLC today, combined they’re my only 1000hr+ game. X4 is one game with DLC and is well on it’s way to that record.

Good for them. RTO is almost universally bullshit.

Ubisoft reportedly said the return to office mandate was for “team creativity” and “better communication”, but the unions argue that “management has consistently failed to present any actual tangible benefits to back this measure.”

Because they have none to present. Multiple levels of bad management trying to justify their existence.

I could tell because every internal connection isn’t hot glued in place.

The learning cliff of the X games is pretty intense but totally worth it. I made it through and just look at me now! I, err… wasn’t going to do anything better with those hundreds of hours anyway.

Yep.

Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd. was a 1983 legal case heard by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by Judge Robert W. Sweet. In their complaint, Universal Studios alleged that Nintendo’s video game Donkey Kong was a trademark infringement of King Kong, the plot and characters of which Universal claimed as their own. Nintendo argued that Universal had themselves proven that King Kong’s plot and characters were in the public domain in Universal City Studios, Inc. v. RKO General, Inc.

For online racing, ACC and iRacing are unmatched.

I contracted the iRacing sickness this year. The online is indeed unmatched but I’d argue the single player racing is also best in class.

The iRacing AI is actually fun to race against and nothing else comes close to the level of customization per-racer. You can build whole custom rosters with individual behaviors. If you’re so inclined you can even share all this stuff through communities like Trading Paints and Race Department.

iRacing is a hole with no bottom. Both time-wise and monetarily. Even to do AI-only you’re still paying the subscription and one-time content prices. It really is the best though.

There’s also Night-Runners which is very much influenced by the TXR/Shutoko Battle games. It’s an in-development crowd funded game, so take from that what you will, but there’s a demo up on Steam as Night-Runners Prologue.

Second this. A friend and I just finished up a full co-op main game + DLC run and it was a blast!