codexarcanum
@codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on Why would I buy this? 6 days ago:
This kind of thing is why I dont get excited for steam sales now. Oh, 50% off Recent AAA Game? Haha, yeah, half off the base price, but the entire game is DLC now and each of those is still full price, and there’s a dozen of them.
- Comment on The infallebility of myself is the best source 1 week ago:
Theodore Kazinksy was a mathematician but is better known for being the Unibomber (and author of a manifesto against technology and academia). Quite the cheeky reference!
- Comment on Excuse the fuck me? 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, I hate these stories for the amount of Big Ethical Talk it beings out in people. “I would stand by my partner no matter what” is the “I could fight a bear” of emotional labor. Unless you’ve had a serious illness or been very close to someone who has (not parents or siblings, a voluntary relationship), then you just really don’t know what you’re talking about.
- Comment on Once again, looking for PS2 game suggestions! 3 weeks ago:
Good catch, my bad, I thought it was just the trilogy collection on PS3. It’s probably been since it first came out that i played it.
- Comment on Piegoth Ur 3 weeks ago:
My first, and only, thought
- Comment on Once again, looking for PS2 game suggestions! 3 weeks ago:
One of my favorite eras to live through and emulate!
Aside from Dark Cloud 2, mentioned already, I also really love:
Katamari, but on Deck the native version is better and includes the sequel.
The Jak and Daxter trilogy, simply amazing games! The first or the second are usually the favs. 1 is a solid mascot platformer. 2 also is, kind of, but adds guns and cars and a slightly GTA inspired open world. 3 is also fun but leans harder into vehicles and generally isn’t regarded as highly.
Odin Sphere. All the VanillaWare games are great, but OS is one of the most beautiful games ever drawn, and has really fun brawler\rpg combat. GrimGrimoire is another of theirs, also good, kind of a side scrolling RTS.
Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 are both a lot of fun, especially if you love Disney or SquareEnix games. If not, they’re still pretty fun and have an… interesting, if convoluted, lore. I probably would recommend if you dont care for Disney though. Probably worth playing Final Fantasy 7 first as well. It’s referenced quite reverently and is a great standalone game (and PS1 still counts I think, haha).
Devil May Cry 1 and 3. You can skip 2, even the fans and creators don’t care about it, and 3 is a prequel. DMC1 is a landmark game, and is required playing in my opinion for being both important and incredibly fun. It can be quite hard though. 3 is arguably the best in the whole series, and holds up really well near the top of the genre to this day.
God of War 1, 2, and 3. They’re all fantastic action games, and pretty influential still. I dont like them as much as DMC, but they’re still pretty fun.
There were actually a lot of pretty mediocre DMC clones on PS2, like Gungrave or Bujingai. If you love the genre, they’re neat and OK fun. God Hand is quite funny and kind of unique, probably the best of the 3 listed here.
I see Okami in there and I approve! Although I think the remasters released on other platform more recently are a better way to play. I also preferred the Wii version back in the day.
The Sly Cooper games and the Ratchet and Clank games are also both really excellent series. I liked Jak more, but they’re distinct games with their own neat elements. Sly’s particularly unique as a mascot stealth game.
Metal Gear Solid series and the Tony Hawk games are obviously excellent, but you’ve got so many other ways to play those I’m not sure they’re worth emulating.
Zone of the Enders, 1 and 2. ZoE 1 is infamous as being the game that came with the first MGS2 demo on it. The game is fine but short, and mostly serves to set up ZoE2, which fucking rules! You pilot a badass mecha and it just has a really fun plot, great music, and good action. An underrated gem!
Not your jam I’m sure, but I’d be remiss if I didnt mention the many hours I spent playing Capcom vs SNK 2. Still one of my favorite fighting games, legendary roster and soundtrack.
If you’d like a roguelike, I’d suggest Baroque or (PS1) Azure Dreams. Both pretty fun, quite long games with lots of replay value. Baroque is uh… well titled, kind of challenging to get into.
Ah, there were so many good games in that era. Truly one of the most stacked console lineups ever.
- Comment on Once again, looking for PS2 game suggestions! 3 weeks ago:
DC2 is absolutely a must play. Its a ridiculously big game though, be warned. You’ll be deep into the latter chapters with the game still throwing new mechanics at you like “omg, I have to play golf in dungeons now too, and fishing, and base building, and photography, and and and and”
I kind of do reccomend a guide for it as there’s some permanent misables.
- Comment on These mugs are getting out of hand 3 weeks ago:
Afraid to drink “ze german” water?
- Comment on Steam Autumn Sale 2025 Has Begun 4 weeks ago:
I’m feeling like a lot of y’all. My backlog is already immense, and i don’t even need DLC for the games I have, which are mostly all huge and never ending anyway. Have we reached peak gaming? Are we now making games faster than anyone can play them?
- Comment on Steam Autumn Sale 2025 Has Begun 4 weeks ago:
CB 2077 is really good and probably worth it if you enjoy open world games like GTA, skyrim, or RDR.
Atomic Heart I have been having a hard time getting into, for all the commonly cited reasons. The game looks gorgeous and its a fun setting, but you actually spend a lot of time in boring grey hallways fighting the same robots, and the combat just isnt especially great. Performance has been real hit or miss as well (I’m on Linux through proton).
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 1 month ago:
I’m pretty early into the game as well, so I almost didn’t say anything. But even if theres a charm that adds HP bars later, I would be annoyed about it. Why wait so long? I’m over 10 hours in. Why take a slot with it? I get similar annoyances about the compass, but at least that one I can understand because maybe some people like the challenge of landmark navigation using just the maps. There is a skill there, and it is part of the skillset of Exploration (a major pillar of design in any metroidvania).
The yellow tools, in general, I’m iffy about the design of. So far I only have 3: compass, more shards, and auto-collect beads. Of these, auto-beads is the most obviously useful. You need many beads, and they get lost pretty easy. Shards are super common and don’t have many uses. But none of these are essential, and all of them get less useful the later into the game you get. The tradeoff is only meaningful early game, and seems to encourage a balance between memorizing the levels and grinding, neither are amazing activities.
Having the compass charm tied to ALL map markers would certainly up the utility of it, though it’s gating another feature behind both a purchase and a charm. I’ve also only found 1 semi useful trap\red-charm so far. Maybe having more traps and skills that required shell bits would put more pressure on needing them and make the charm that gives extras more appeal for a trap-heavy play style?
Again, I grant that maybe I’m too early in the game yet, but I feel like these systems should be coming together and cohering more after a half-dozen bosses and 10 hours of play.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 1 month ago:
The runbacks don’t bother me too much so far. I do think there’s some skills in the runback, but it relies heavily on the level designer as well. An ideal runback:
- is relatively short, you should have time to reflect on the boss, but not get sidetracked
- has enemies that drop currency, so repeated runs slowly build you up (assuming you always collect your shade)
- has enemies that train you on the bosses timings or counters (if the boss is parry heavy, put a tricky-to-parry enemy enroute back)
- has a “speed route” that let’s you bypass most or all of the run once you’ve figured it out
These factors make a run both interesting game play and still a form of progression. A badly designed run lacks these factors, being just a slow slog to get back into the boss fight.
My biggest complaint so far is the double damage. Every boss and so many common enemies do nothing but double damage. Why even have 5 HP instead of 3? And it being 5 (and bind healing 3) have compounding effects with this problem. Taking a single hit on the way to a boss actually costs you an entire “boss hit” so runbacks are worse all around. Trying to heal mid boss only gets you “one and a half” hits back which takes a lot of silk to build up and probably is a worse deal for you than just using the silk to power more attacks.
Double damage would suck a lot less (and be a better mechanic) if you had 6 HP to start, or if you healed 4 at a time, or if bosses didnt always do 2 damage. There’s no tension to avoiding punishing hits because every move is equally punishing. It makes fights feel very conservative which is maybe intentionally meant to evoke Hornet as a careful hunter, using traps and plans to take down big foes.
I find the opposite though, she feels fragile and reactive. I wish starting damage was higher too. I had this issue in Hollow Knight as well, everything takes too many hits. Common enemies are spongy, bosses take at least 33% too long across the board. Especially it gets annoying since a lot of bosses so far get spammier and faster towards their final phases, so you spend so much time dodging the same attacks and looking for openings to chip hits in. Skills and traps don’t do enough damage to feel especially useful either.
I also hate, and this is another compounding factor, the complete lack of enemy HP bars. On regular enemies this is annoying (gotta count my hits) but on bosses it feels negligent. Bosses have multiple phases and take so long to kill, it would be nice to know if my last run was just a hit or 2 away from the end or if I still had a 3rd phase to plan for. It adds to the poor perception of skills and traps as well. Sting Shard and Thread Storm both seem to hit several times, around a half-dozen, but neither seems to do much more damage than a couple of regular hits.
Overall I’m really loving Silksong, the art and music are top notch. The DLC for HK convinced me that Team Cherry and I disagree about some fundamental ideas in game design, and HKSS bears that out.
- Comment on Something we all can agree on 1 month ago:
Incorrect! Some of them are CIA ops who do it for love of the game!
- Comment on Applies to many things. Not just religion 1 month ago:
“Science” doesn’t do or advocate anything, it’s just a method. It’s like pitting Religion against Object Oriented Programming (They’re the same picture)
Anyway, great shitpost
- Comment on Make America Consoom Again 2 months ago:
I’ve been replaying cruelty squad, and the second mission has you take out a CEO addicted to FunkoPops. Anyway, this image reminded me of that. Be nice if someone brought a real “CEO mindset” to a meeting with him.
- Comment on sponsored by raycon 2 months ago:
A friend and I played the whole campaign in co-op when it came out and both cracked up so bad after that cutscene. I think we had to restart the mission because we were laughing too hard still to actually start playing (plus we got to watch the briefing again!)
- Comment on Anon is Banished 2 months ago:
Yep, in The Eyes of the Overworld, we meet Cugel the Clever, literally the prototypical D&D rogue/thief. He steals from a wizard and is banished very far away for it. He eventually gets back to take revenge on the wizard and steps on a trap or something that banishes him even farther away the second time. His journey picks back up in Cugel’s Saga, a sequel novel, where he goes on more zany adventures and eventually makes it back again as I recall.
- Comment on Deep dish thought 2 months ago:
Ooh damn, I think you’re really cooking on this “anti-calzone” idea! Two slices, back to back, bread in the middle surround by toppings on both sides. Basically impossible to eat cleanly or set down once assembled. It’s an open-face-and-ass sandwich. A sloppy ho.
- Comment on Anon crunches some numbers 2 months ago:
If there’s one hard lesson of history I keep relearning, it’s that almost nothing ever happens until it materially is required to happen. Language and agriculture waited until population density was high enough. The industrial revolution didn’t happen until the logistics and population sizes again necessitated massive changes, even though the steam engine was hundreds of years old. Revolutions don’t happen until the population is starving.
If anything in history is impressive it’s the rare individuals and societies that change before they’re forced to by material necessity (and those cases are often debatable). Really dampens the notion of idealism being viable.
- Comment on Something to think about 2 months ago:
Seems I’ve been dup’d
- Comment on Something to think about 2 months ago:
Slowly sliding a switch labeled “Dubstep” towards on and checking the crowd reaction at each step like a DJ at a corporate event.
- Comment on Bird 2 months ago:
And now folks, realize that this is true of every single thing that humans think about.
You put a duck and a sparrow side by side and maybe it seems obvious that, while not the same, these two things have something deeply in common. But most people have never considered them in one thought. When you get into abstract ideas like “freedom” or “socialism” is it any surprise that most people can’t even recognize them, let alone agree on any commonalities?
You spend all day arranging dogs next to bears going “do you see how these are both canine-form mammals?” and the public is watching a tiktok while dismissing you going “Uh bears aren’t pets, what a dumbass!”
- Comment on what video game deserves to be in a museum? 2 months ago:
Alright, so here’s my case for Thief, the Looking Glass Studios game.
Thief, on its own, is a great game and basically shares the claim to originating a lot of ideas behind stealth in games along with MGS, which came out the same year.
What many don’t know is how incredibly innovative what they were doing with their engine tech was. In another timeline, id software were mildly successful action game makers while LGS became the industry defining mega success. The Dark Engine refines a lot of ideas present in Ultima Underworld and marries them to tech that was decades ahead of its time.
Check out the opening and closing of this long talk: youtu.be/wo84LFzx5nI
Thief had, probably, the first ECS in gaming. They also had their own rendering technique using “portals” that was a bit slower than id’s BSP trees but allowed for insane geometry. They also had an incredible system for events called stimulus-response that was doing things like Breath of the Wild’s “chemistry engine” again, decades before it would be rediscovered.
They weren’t just making games, these were really simulations of a limited world with complex interactions. If the rest of the industry had caught onto their good practices, who knows what the landscape would look like today!
- Comment on what video game deserves to be in a museum? 2 months ago:
Doom
I could write an essay significantly larger than the game itself and it wouldn’t be as powerful of an argument as just saying the name with the weight of legacy it commands.
- Comment on Hot birds in your area iykyk 2 months ago:
- Comment on 2 months ago:
Meh! Call me a wet blanket but I’ve been on the internet since before 4chan, so I’m pretty familiar with the Nazi bar problem and I’m long past accepting “just jokes.”
- Comment on How it started... 2 months ago:
- Comment on Actually I see something completely different 3 months ago:
- Comment on Its like losing your identity 3 months ago:
Voyager for Android doesn’t show them, so I have no idea what any of you look like anyway!
- Comment on It's the truth 3 months ago:
Stern Asian Grandma is most displeased with how spicy my dish was yet again, and demands i add a heaping spoonful of chilli crunch to fix it!
