ampersandrew
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world
- Comment on Favourite Metroid game? 11 hours ago:
Okay, but did you ever play Hunters multiplayer?
- Comment on Favourite Metroid game? 13 hours ago:
Mine is probably the oddball pick with Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. I know it’s hardly the first game with a light and dark world mechanic, but I really appreciated the way you traversed in and out of them, and how each world replenished the opposite ammo type. The multiplayer in that game is also underrated, but probably not as good as in the DS game.
- Comment on Why We Love to Get Lost in Games: The Enduring Appeal of Metroidvanias 15 hours ago:
I’ve never heard of B: AA described as a metroidvania… How do you figure that one?
It is a metroidvania. It fits the definition exactly. You backtrack over a space as you get more and more upgrades to unlock parts of it that were gated. The sequels weren’t really that so much, because they were open world games that gave you access to the entire map, give or take a few interior areas.
A Robot Named Fight is a fairly obscure indie game, but if you wish you could get that experience of playing Super Metroid for the first time over and over again, this is as close as you’ll get.
- Comment on Why We Love to Get Lost in Games: The Enduring Appeal of Metroidvanias 17 hours ago:
The “metroids” and the “vanias” do definitely feel different, but the cross section in that Venn diagram is pretty obvious, and that’s what the genre is named for. I prefer the “metroids” to the “vanias”, but even the “vanias” have tons of non-combat upgrades.
- Comment on Why We Love to Get Lost in Games: The Enduring Appeal of Metroidvanias 17 hours ago:
Axiom Verge had a lot of hidden passages through walls and otherwise same-y environments that just made getting back to where I wanted to go a chore. I don’t remember a compass, but if it had one, it didn’t help.
With Hollow Knight and Symphony of the Night, the maps are so large and contiguous, and they give you so little information as to why you didn’t fully explore a corner of the map, that you end up either easily missing a thing that you needed in order to progress or you get there and say to yourself, “oh, that’s right, that’s why I was stuck”, wasting a lot of time traveling there to come to that realization. In most Metroid games, the map is broken up into chunks with lots of entrances and exits connecting to the other chunks, which can keep the map screen small and easier to read. Plus, if there’s an ability that the game wants to make sure you get before you leave, they make sure you’re trapped in there with no option except to find it and make sure you know how it works first.
- Submitted 17 hours ago to games@lemmy.world | 21 comments
- Comment on Avowed is the most fun I’ve have had since Skyrim! 1 day ago:
Disco Elysium isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It certainly wasn’t mine. And I love Outer Worlds.
- Comment on Xbox Sales Hit Rock Bottom After Historic 2024 Decline 5 days ago:
In a lot of ways, I liked it because of how short it was.
- Comment on Xbox Sales Hit Rock Bottom After Historic 2024 Decline 5 days ago:
There have been so many great games in the last few years that it’s been hard to keep up, but they haven’t required those new consoles.
- Comment on Ubisoft revenues decline 31.4% to €990m 5 days ago:
The worst part is that Tom Clancy should not be a power fantasy. That brand means nothing in video games anymore.
- Comment on Avowed | Review Thread 1 week ago:
Well, yours is certainly one perspective that I don’t share. I’m sorry his post wasn’t polite enough for you, but I promise he is and will continue to be friends with all of these people afterward; it’s a small industry and only getting smaller.
While several reviews are knocking the game for things that he and I find not only to be non problems but in fact solutions, I found value in him sharing that perspective coupled with a negative review detailing the opposite, which is why I put it here.
- Comment on Avowed | Review Thread 1 week ago:
Grubb has no ill will toward his colleagues. But there are plenty of them praising games that he and I found disappointing for that sanding down, so I understand frustration when there are reviews knocking down a game for delivering what we feel games “ought to be” doing. You get short snark because it fits better in a character limit. If you want more nuanced opinions of his, they come in podcast form, not written form.
- Comment on Avowed | Review Thread 1 week ago:
I understand that reviews are subjective. I just found it funny that the characters in the game were shouting the solution to the reviewer’s problems at him for so long that he found it frustrating.
Jeff Grubb’s not-a-review was speaking to exactly the kind of thing that’s important to me in games and why he likes this one so much, which did me a great service, so I’m not sure why you’re shitting on him for spicy takes here, lol.
- Comment on Avowed | Review Thread 1 week ago:
From Jeff Grubb:
And also, to be kind of a shit, I think the complaints about being underleveled and not having the right gear, mostly come from games like these being streamlined to the point where they usually have no friction. The obstacles in this game aren’t just tolerable, they’re the main reason I love it.
I definitely read a review where the reviewer was frustrated that he was underleveled and annoyed that his companions kept yelling at him to upgrade his gear, lol. But seriously, this sanding down of any sort of friction is something that has gotten to me with plenty of games in the past decade, so I appreciate someone laying it out plainly.
- Submitted 1 week ago to games@lemmy.world | 0 comments
- Comment on Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds - Announce Trailer 1 week ago:
Sounds worth a shot at least. Thanks for the write up.
- Comment on Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds - Announce Trailer 1 week ago:
I could be sold on it. Is it super random like Mario Kart, or do they avoid the likes of blue shells?
- Comment on Crysis 4 put "on hold" as developer Crytek is next studio hit by layoffs 1 week ago:
Crysis 3 wasn’t a trainwreck. It wasn’t as good as Crysis 1, but few games are.
- Comment on Elden Ring Nightreign releases May 30th 1 week ago:
It’s an original game. Many assets are not original. Many others will be. This is a very normal part of game development. As much as “asset flips” were an issue back when the Steam floodgates opened, people seem to have really misunderstood what the problem actually was.
- Comment on PSN Is Still Down After 14 Hours And No One Knows Why 1 week ago:
The thing I’m criticizing is that they make this other kind of server impossible, even though it would be exactly the kind of backup plan you’d want for a situation like this one.
- Comment on PSN Is Still Down After 14 Hours And No One Knows Why 1 week ago:
It would help people who wanted to have a functioning video game. Then you could ask your friend (or someone on Discord) what their IP address is and play with them.
- Comment on PSN Is Still Down After 14 Hours And No One Knows Why 1 week ago:
I’m not mixing anything up. If they allowed for things like direct IP connections, you could still play Baldur’s Gate 3, online, regardless of this downtime. It wasn’t organically that we arrived here. It’s objectively worse.
- Comment on PSN Is Still Down After 14 Hours And No One Knows Why 1 week ago:
Mouse and keyboard hasn’t been so much a requirement for the better part of 20 years on PC, but the rest tracks.
- Comment on PSN Is Still Down After 14 Hours And No One Knows Why 1 week ago:
consoles are walled gardens that consumers pay to be in
Less and less as time goes on, is my point, for the reasons we’ve discussed. Maybe any one or two of those reasons aren’t doing it on their own, but in the aggregate, it appears consumers are slowly deciding not to put up with the downsides anymore.
- Comment on PSN Is Still Down After 14 Hours And No One Knows Why 1 week ago:
Cloud saves that are free on PC, and they don’t block your access to transfer saves without it like consoles do. Playing online on PC is free, and we know exactly how to make it free on consoles, but they’re not interested in doing so. No one can guarantee 100% uptime, which is why it’s a bad deal to make the subscription for that stuff mandatory instead of allowing things like direct IP connections.
- Comment on PSN Is Still Down After 14 Hours And No One Knows Why 1 week ago:
I’m pretty sure PlayStation requires games with certain types of multiplayer to authenticate with them as part of the agreement to publish on the platform so that’s restrictive.
It sounds like that requirement is just a bad deal for the consumer. And they charge you for it. And they can’t guarantee uptime.
- Comment on PSN Is Still Down After 14 Hours And No One Knows Why 1 week ago:
You used to be able to type in an IP address whether or not the official server is running. Sometimes you still can, but seeing as Baldur’s Gate 3 has LAN and direct IP connection on PC but not on PlayStation, it sure seems like Sony is asking them to specifically remove the feature if they wanted it in the first place.
Then beyond that, you’ve got a mismatch behind what your money is actually for. It used to be for paying for their servers, but you often don’t even connect to Sony’s servers anymore. Plenty of games behind that same paywall have their own servers, like Call of Duty for instance, but Call of Duty’s multiplayer is behind the same paywall as Helldivers 2, which is running servers on Sony’s dime. And beyond that…the reason multiplayer is free on PC is because your purchases are funding them. The majority of game sales on consoles are now digital, just like Steam, and that is a trend that’s accelerating. Meanwhile, the subscription fee is probably one of a multitude of reasons that people are seeing that free online play on PC and leaving consoles.
- Comment on PSN Is Still Down After 14 Hours And No One Knows Why 1 week ago:
Boy, it sure is a good thing that Sony charges a subscription fee for any and all network multiplayer traffic.
- Comment on Rocksteady is back working on a single-player Batman game, it’s claimed | VGC 1 week ago:
I’ll bet that number is significantly higher than zero, but as per reporting some months ago, much like with Redfall, Rocksteady saw a significant exodus during Suicide Squad, since the studio was tasked with building a game they did not want to make.
- Comment on Wonder Woman Game is "Years Away From Release" As Warner Bros. Gaming Division Struggles 1 week ago:
You didn’t think Machine Games could make a great game about a character who hates Nazis?