brsrklf
@brsrklf@jlai.lu
- Comment on Marvels Rivals requires creators to sign a contract that removes your right to give a negative review to access the playtest 2 days ago:
Embargoes do get a bit of backlash sometimes, but not nearly enough.
When I am aware they are a huge red flag for me in any case.
- Comment on Marvels Rivals requires creators to sign a contract that removes your right to give a negative review to access the playtest 3 days ago:
No way they can enforce that. I hope nobody is going to intimidated by this.
- Comment on Atari Revives Infogames As A Publishing Label 1 week ago:
That “Atari” was already Infogrames buying itself a new name in the early 00s. It had already changed hands a number of times since 70s/80s Atari, and had basically nothing to do with it anymore.
- Comment on Balatro - Patch 1.0.1f 1 week ago:
Waiting for this on the Switch. The slight reduction on early antes should help for going further more consistently. With some decks my runs are often cut short by a bad draw before I had a chance to get good combos.
- Comment on Steam is a ticking time bomb 5 weeks ago:
I did use Gog Galaxy as my main library for a while too. I switched to playnite at one point because it had more options and updates.
- Comment on Steam is a ticking time bomb 5 weeks ago:
Honestly, it’s been a very long time since I last used start/windows menu as a… menu I guess. I don’t think I’ve tried to explore it since early XP. Back then I’d even try to organise it a bit by categories and such.
Now I have way too many games to make it readable, with a lot of these not currently installed but available. The only way I’m using the windows menu is with the search bar.
Having a dedicated game library (with everything in it) makes sense to me.
- Comment on Steam is a ticking time bomb 5 weeks ago:
I’ve kind of drifted away from Steam around the Greenlight/Direct debacle, when it quickly went from too tightly curated to an unexplorable paradise for thousands of fake games. Steam is not the inescapable monopoly this weird editorial makes it to be.
Nowadays, I need a good reason to buy on Steam, like decent workshop integration. And even then, I don’t even have to buy on Steam to have that. I bought Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress DRM-free from Ludeon’s site and itch.io and that included Steam key activations too.
Centralised library may have been an argument once, but it has not been for a long time. Stuff like Playnite obfuscates all that launcher explosion crap.
- Comment on Sega is killing Puyo Puyo 1 month ago:
Long-time casual player of the 8 and 16-bit Compile games (mostly through emulation), I’m not even sure I’ve ever seen a SEGA-developped Puyo for any platform in retail before Puyo Puyo Tetris. Seems like they barely existed at all where I live.
So I’m not sure Puyo Puyo Tetris is to blame for the state of the game, at least it made a lot of people aware that the game exists. Though I can’t say I’m a big fan of its aesthetics or writing…
Nowadays whenever I want to play some quick Puyo I just play Tsu on switch online SNES.
- Comment on The developers of Dead Cells, Darkest Dungeon and Slay The Spire are launching their own "triple-I" Game Awards 1 month ago:
“OMG, those guys had 20 full seconds to talk? WRAP IT UP”
- Comment on The Triple-i Initiative gaming showcase is coming April 10th 1 month ago:
Straight from the article :
“Since using letters seems to be the trend in the industry, we figured that adding a couple of i’s to indie was a fair way to describe this new format. Also, triple-i just sounds cool”
They’re a bit late on the trend though, according to Microsoft and Ubisoft it’s all about Quadruple A now.
- Comment on TIL you can remove tags such as horror from itch.io using ?exclude=tg.horror in the url. 1 month ago:
For the bottom of the barrel part of it (not good horror) it’s also probably the easiest reaction you can get.
A jumpscare can be as easy as a sudden full screen gif. Good luck trying to provoke any other kind of feeling like that.
- Comment on Let's discuss: Tetris 1 month ago:
For a long time I thought I didn’t like Tetris very much. Tetris 99, Tetris Effect and Puyo Puyo Tetris made me reconsider that. Turns out I just needed a push, and now I occasionally spend hours on the stuff, gladly.
I think excluding rhythm games, Tetris must be one of the only game that gets me into “the zone”.
- Comment on Bethesda Celebrates 30th Anniversary of The Elder Scrolls, Provides Small Development Update on The Elder Scrolls VI 1 month ago:
The one with 2,061 preinstalled games on it, right? I love Super Mario Bros 43, that’s when the series really took off IMO.
- Comment on Bethesda Celebrates 30th Anniversary of The Elder Scrolls, Provides Small Development Update on The Elder Scrolls VI 1 month ago:
The only reason gamebryo modding is “easy” is because the community has been working on tools for it for decades.
It uses weird proprietary formats nobody else is using and full of stupid quirks. Back when Morrowind released, officially all Bethesda provided along the construction set was their plugin for a thousand-dollar licenced product to make nif models. Nowadays they don’t even do that anymore because they know people have been making their own free tools for Blender etc.
As for the modding structure itself, other games support a plugin hierarchy like they do. Rimworld in particular, and it runs on Unity.
- Comment on Fights In Tight Spaces devs announce fantasy follow-up Knights In Tight Spaces 1 month ago:
I haven’t played Fights in tight spaces or even heard about it before, and it looks interesting.
But honestly, that fantasy flavour appeals a lot more to me than the look of the first one.
- Comment on Are game studios suddenly abandoning Black developers? 1 month ago:
One of the 6 characters in Xenoblade 3’s main cast is black. He’s quite interesting too, this game has pretty good character writing IMO. They’re not the usual stereotypical JRPG character types.
- Comment on 15 billion score in Pokemon Pinball + Caanoo 1 month ago:
Once during a long train trip I beat the Metroid Prime three times in a row in Metroid Prime Pinball, and at that point I told myself “OK, this game will never end, drain all remaining balls and do something else”.
- Comment on MAR10 Day 2024 - Nintendo 2 months ago:
You absolutely can.
It shouldn’t matter at all to you though. And it sounds absolutely ridiculous when you’re shouting your outrage at people who do buy some of their products.
- Comment on MAR10 Day 2024 - Nintendo 2 months ago:
Regarding “overcharging”.
The only price that exists is the one they offer for it. If you think it’s too expensive for what is offered, congratulations, you know how to spend money. For any kind of product whatsoever.
I certainly think Super Mario Odyssey or Super Mario Bros Wonder were worth their price tag, because they’re great. And that’s completely subjective.
You either think it’s worth it and buy it, or you don’t. They’re selling games, not food and water. And you’ve got a freaking galaxy of other games to choose from.
- Comment on What are some good games that have a bad reputation due to unreasonable expectations? 3 months ago:
I think Castlevania : Lords of Shadow’s IP kind of worked against it. It’s useless to non- fans of the series, and it’s jarring to those who are.
It’s like it is constantly wondering if it’s a new take on the universe, or just a whole new one with useless, random references thrown in. There are lots of people completely displaced from their original time and background, and I am not talking of the game’s big spoilery reveal, but completely random ones with no point.
One example among many : in the main series there is a character who is a 20th century German artist who tragically turned mad because he lost his family during WW2. He is “reimagined” into a random bat-faced vampire general in the 11th century. His name is just mentioned in narration before a short fight and he’s never seen again.
Despite all of that, the game is great. Mostly linear, definitely has some pacing issues, but it’s pretty good at telling its story, it’s a decent spectacle fighter, and the environments are great.
Sequels… Yeah, not so much. But I really liked the first one. I just feel the Castlevania name only set it for something it wasn’t though…
- Comment on What are your opinions about 'handicap' features in games 3 months ago:
Nintendo started doing that a lot around the Wii. New Super Mario Bros series, Donkey Kong Country Returns, etc… also on other games regular messages to let you know that you could lower the difficulty. And Skyward Sword’s Fi being unable to let you play more than 2 seconds without trying to “help”.
Honestly I did not like it much. I didn’t mind that it was an option, but I did mind that it was a shiny, blinking thing making shrieking sounds at you as soon as you’d start facing a bit of challenge.
Super Mario Bros Wonder’s way of doing this is way better IMO, with the beginner characters and some of the badges that you can activate to make the game easier when you need it.
- Comment on What difficult games/game challenges did you give up on? 3 months ago:
Personally I got through the “standard” white palace (not the side path. Fuck that).
But I never could beat the Radiance. It’s fast, its attack hitboxes are completely bonkers, and I absolutely hate the fact I can’t properly train against it to make sense of its patterns. Because every time I lose I have to redo that stupid Hollow Knight section again. It’s not even a hard part, it’s just wasting my time and making me more nervous when I have to face the real deal.
- Comment on Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Will Have a Character Voiced by Text-to-Speech at Launch - IGN 3 months ago:
“We didn’t mean to do this, honest!
Now, on a scale of 1 to 10, please tell us how strongly you feel about this. And, hypothetically, whether you’d mind if a few dozens more NPC were like that too.”
- Comment on Has Bowser finally turned good and gave up on hunting Peach? 4 months ago:
Even in the main series he’s been switching between power hungry destroyer of worlds (Galaxy, Wonder) and goofy bully with a Peach obsession (Sunshine, Odyssey) for a long time.
Yeah, RPGs (Square, Paper or M&L) often have him team up with the good guys when he’s been out-villained, and usually kicked out of his own castle.
- Comment on What's up with Epic Games? 4 months ago:
Gog is the main place for that, since their principal stance is DRM-free downloadable installers. They have a launcher too, but it’s optional and only meant as convenience. Itch.io does DRM-free too, but they’re often more about very indie and often experimental games. They have a few all-time indie classics though.
Steam technically doesn’t require the games to implement DRM, so a part of their library is DRM-free once you’ve passed the installation process (they don’t need steam to be running). This is on a case-by-case basis though. Lots of Steam games use steamworks (Steam’s very own DRM) and a lot more use third party DRMs (and even require external launchers like Ubisoft’s or EA’s).
For years I have been a bit pissed at Steam for opening themselves to all and every shitty fake game/quick buck asset flip there is out there, refusing to do any kind of curation. Instead they opted for letting the almighty Algorithm do that for them. I doesn’t work, their store is a discoverability catastrophe full of shit.
That said, I still buy from them in some cases, and these cases are mostly down to one point : the workshop, the integrated mod and user content interface. It’s for a handful of games that profit a lot from it, but it’s undenyingly convenient.
What I often do if it’s a possibility is buying directly from the developer, which often include a Steam key. That’s what I did for Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress (through Itch.io). It gives you everything Steam has to offer for the game and usually a DRM-free version too. Only “down point” is that your Steam review doesn’t count for the game’s Steam score when you have activités it from an external key. I don’t care much for that.
In the end at that point you’ve noticed I talked about a lot of different platforms and launchers, and it’s not even all of them. Like the previous poster, I can’t recommend Playnite enough. It’s a meta launcher that makes all of your libraries united in the same place, with a lot of options. You still require all the platforms installed, but you’re not using them directly most of the time.
I’ve got Steam, Gog, Humble, Ubisoft, EA, Amazon, Xbox, Itch.io and yeah, even Epic through it (though I only use EGS to get the free games, I don’t plan on buying anything from there).
- Comment on If Gamers Want More Powerful Women Then Stop Being Afraid Of Them 4 months ago:
That made me think about the most arbitrary and broken player “moral choice” I know : the end of Fable 2.
spoiler for those who care
Bad guy enslaves lots of people for years for his project, killing many of them. Then kills your family and your cute puppy because fuck you. After you beat bad guy, magic ascended girl appears, rewards you with one of three wishes for post-game : revive everyone enslaved by bad guy, revive your family and cute puppy, or give you lots of useless monies. The player is not really responsible for the slave deaths. The ability to “fix” ten years of history by magically erasing all the deaths is weird and undermines the impact of the whole story a lot. Also, and perhaps more importantly on the player’s side of things, the dog is a freaking gameplay mechanic, not having it prevents some actions and blocks a few minor quests. Well, sorry, nameless, faceless theoretical people who died years ago, I really need my cute puppy. Really, the game never even establishes why that very specifically determined choice has to be made. It feels very rushed, very cheap and the whole thing is over in 5 minutes.
- Comment on If Gamers Want More Powerful Women Then Stop Being Afraid Of Them 4 months ago:
I know it’s very hard for me to care about Mass Effect 1 Ashley Williams.
I know she’s supposed to turn good (maybe?) in sequels, but, hey, you’ve got to sacrifice someone at the end of 1, because cheap emotional engagement trick.
May as well send the one-dimensional specist asshole with absolutely no other character trait.
- Comment on 'There's almost nobody left': CEO of Baldur's Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke says the D&D team he initially worked with is gone, due to Hasbro layoffs 4 months ago:
…is that an attempt at sarcasm or something?
‘There’s almost nobody left’: CEO of Baldur’s Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke says the D&D team he initially worked with is gone, due to Hasbro layoffs
Same Lemmy title as the article. You know exactly who’s talking (“CEO of Baldur’s Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke”), about whom (“the D&D team he initially worked with”), what happened to them and who is to blame (“due to Hasbro layoffs”).
As far as titles go, it’s pretty good at telling you exactly what the actual article is about. Sure, you may need basic knowledge about how a licenced product works, and that BG3 is under the D&D licence. It would be rather hard to fit all that in a title.
- Comment on What game did you last finish? What did you think of it? 5 months ago:
Which version, PC? I did that one a while ago and I liked it. But then I was like “Wait, how?” when I saw it was being ported to Switch, because I am not sure how the weird stuff it does would work on it.
In any case it has interesting themes, and it’s very good at making the player connect with them.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 months ago:
I have thousands of games on a dozen different platforms and none of them use any kind of predatory tactics. Not sure what you’re talking about.
Very few of them are recent Ubisoft, EA, Actiblizz… of course because a lot of those are at least guilty of microtransactions, or yeah, worse, gacha/lootbox, and for the same reason almost none are specifically made-for-mobile games.