Nobody is forcing studios or publishers at gunpoint to release on a subscription service.

Except for the hilarious number of studios owned by Microsoft. One would hope Microsoft takes the effect of Game Pass into account when they’re reviewing sales figures and shutting down studios. One would hope…

Upgraded from 10 to 50 series in the same computer? I’ve always had issues upgrading GPUs in place, regardless of vendor. My standard GPU upgrade process now includes running DDU to properly wipe drivers and do a fresh install from there.

I guess this November is no longer a big red X on every publisher’s release calendar

Giant Bomb deserves more than a thread hanging off the Polygon story post. I don’t think it’s ever looked nearly this dire.

I don’t remember exactly how I stumbled across GB, but I think it came up randomly during TheSpeedGamers Final Fantasy marathon in 2009 (which was the inspiration for the first GDQ marathon in 2010). They weren’t necessarily the first to do the very personality-focused, video heavy, gaming coverage, but they definitely went at it the hardest and with the fewest fucks given about doing anything the “right” way. I’ve spent over 16 years now following the site and the people that have come through it, the Giant Bomb Extended Universe. I couldn’t possibly quantify the impact they’ve had on me over the years. It may not technically be the end but I don’t see a path forward from here.

Just gonna go be sad for a bit and watch the best content GB ever put out. That would be, obviously, Thursday Night Throwdown: Fortune Street (and part 2). <>

Here we are, 17 years after a bunch of clueless suits fucked with GameSpot and led to the creation of Giant Bomb. Now it’s a whole new set of clueless suits fucking with Giant Bomb. It’s the circle of capitalism.

I was in deep for GB until the Nextlander split and slowly trailed off since then. I still have mad respect for that group and follow most of them in one way or another. This is a new level of dire for them.

The Giant Bomb Preservation Project still appears to be active so… at least there’s that I guess.

Awesome. Yet another reason to donate to the IA!

Edit: Grabbed episode 888 from IA. I’m only 10 minutes in and already these guys are going for it. I love this, fuck Fandom.

I find it interesting how many people will click the link, find the relevant info, and paste it into a comment with a dash of snark, completely missing that the info is already in the body of the post. It’s some weird offshoot of not reading the article.

For anyone wondering, the game is Silent Hills. It was cancelled 10 years ago and you can still find people on eBay selling PS4s with the P.T. demo loaded on it for way too much money.

You’re telling me I can now comfortably play Satisfactory from my couch? This is going to have a profoundly negative effect on my health

Red Faction: Gorilla

Billy Mitchell is an asshole and Karl Jobst is yet another YouTube outrage peddler, just video game flavored this time. I have a hard time mustering sympathy for either of them.

Oh man. If you think game dev has been having a rough go of it lately, games media was already a smoking crater before all the waves of dev layoffs began. Now GI wants to dive back in and restart their print offering too? There are a bunch of good people over there and I’m happy they’re getting another chance unshackled from GameStop, but woof. Good luck!

They don’t always suck, just usually. The HP Reverb 2 was a pretty good VR headset for the price. I felt like I got my money’s worth out of it without any significant issues.

Nice. I’m putting that one right next to
https://nohello.net/

Kunos has built a lot of good will in the community with the modability of AC and long term support for both AC and ACC. The AC Evo early access has been real clunky but they earned their fans and their understanding.

I was really enjoying Nioh 2 until I got to a level that was just a boss rush of a bunch of old bosses I had already beaten. No thanks. Never picked it back up.

But they covered her left eye! Every Anna fan knows that’s the juiciest part! 🙄

“While 98% of the fans are welcoming this, there will always be people like you,” Harada replied. “I understand and sympathize that it may not suit your personal taste, but if you prefer the old design, past works already exist. I am not taking those away from you.

“Also, you refer to yourself as ‘Anna fans’, as if you represent all Anna fans, but you should express your opinion as an individual.”

“You threaten to quit if she isn’t brought back, you complain the moment she is brought back,” he explained. “You demand that she be reverted after she has been completely redesigned from scratch, including her model and framework. And if she actually were reverted, you’d just say, ‘that’s recycling’.

“Either way, your method of expressing your opinion and the content of your argument are entirely unconstructive, utterly pointless, and, above all, disrespectful to the other Anna fans who are genuinely looking forward to her.”

I appreciate you Harada.

Sure is great that they patented the Nemesis system just to do nothing with it for the better part of a decade then shut down the studio that invented it. Brilliant use of talent and the US patent system there.

Cyberpunk ZERO Sievert? Could be neat!

If we’re allowing Trilogy as one game then I’m going to step out a bit and go with AM2R. It’s extremely good and not “for a fan remake”, just straight up good.

If we’re talking single games made/published by Nintendo I’d go with Dread for 2D. I played through that 3-4 times back to back when it came out which was a totally new behavior for me. For 3D it’s Prime 1, still the best 3D example of the genre.

Pretty ballsy to put up a long LinkedIn post that boils down to “I am incompetent and should not be hired under any circumstances.”

There are so many… I’ll just go with a couple

Fallout 3 Wanderers Edition always comes to mind for making that game so much better to play and more stable than the base game. I wouldn’t replay FO3 any other way

Elden Ring Seamless Co-op is what ER co-op should have been to begin with. God it’s so good I put another couple hundred hours in to replay every inch of ER+DLC with a friend.

Endless shitty trash talk is why most people gave up on public voice chat.

Absolutely. Coincidentally I’m replaying through FF9 and it holds up fine with just some emulator bells and whistles. The art style helps a lot there.

I’ve tried to get into 8 a few times over the years but can never stick with it. I would be very interested in a 7 style remake with refactored mechanics.

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!