nfreak
@nfreak@lemmy.ml
- Comment on BREAKING: PlayStation is shutting down Bluepoint Games (Demon's Souls/Shadow of the Colossus remakes) 1 week ago:
It was kind of weird to me how a lot of folks didn’t seem happy with that one. I played the hell out of the original and the remake was almost 1:1 aside from the graphical updates and a small handful of QoL. They did a phenomenal job with it and really nailed the combat and vibes of the original in the best ways.
Dropping the entire studio like this is so fucked.
- Comment on Mewgenics becomes the most-played roguelite ever on Steam 1 week ago:
I get that, but to me it’s honestly less about the inclusions, especially given the dev timeline, but more about defending it so staunchly today with his whole “balancing out” shtick. It doesn’t seem like anyone was actually paid for it, let alone under contract, so it would’ve been so easy to just go “yeah this is kind of fucked up after everything that’s happened, let’s cut these out before release” instead of doubling down on it and defending the inclusion of literal nazis and rapists.
- Comment on Mewgenics becomes the most-played roguelite ever on Steam 1 week ago:
- Comment on Mewgenics becomes the most-played roguelite ever on Steam 1 week ago:
Yeah honestly, like I can’t say I forgive his past shit but he’s absolutely come a LONG way from those days, credit where it’s due. I’m more concerned about including literal nazis (the Kleins) and an actual rapist (Chrischan), along with not clearly communicating any of this to the people he pulled in.
- Comment on Mewgenics becomes the most-played roguelite ever on Steam 1 week ago:
The game itself is really fucking good, I’ll give them that, but I stopped playing the moment I learned about the cast list and McMillen doubling down on it. Incredibly disappointed in this centrist bullshit to the say the least.
- Comment on Good news, UK Discord users, we're part of a Peter Thiel-linked data collection "experiment" 1 week ago:
Ah maybe the article I was reading was a bit dated, good to know it might be on the horizon. Honestly I almost worry the dev’s gonna get slapped with a cease and desist because it’s almost literally a discord clone in every single way.
It did rub me the wrong way at first to see paywalled features already, but reading it more closely it seems to be mostly to offset server costs, and a self-hosted server seems to have all the paid upgrades available by default, so that seems fair enough.
After playing with all 3 a bit, I have a feeling Fluxer might be the one that sticks, mostly due to the ease of use and familiarity.
- Comment on Good news, UK Discord users, we're part of a Peter Thiel-linked data collection "experiment" 1 week ago:
The one I’ve been seeing crop up a lot these past couple days is Fluxer, which is literally almost a 1:1 discord clone, even more than Stoat. Though E2EE isn’t currently on the solo dev’s roadmap, which is a shame.
Matrix seems like the best bet in terms of privacy and security, but I swear every single client is hot garbage for some reason or another. I can’t imagine non-tech-savvy users will ever be willing to stick to it.
Realistically I think Stoat or Fluxer is going to win out here. I’m setting up all 3 for now, and I plan to ditch discord completely at the end of this month.
- Comment on Welcoming Discord users amidst the challenge of Age Verification 2 weeks ago:
Yeah this one seems like the one to keep an eye on, but seems like there’s no equivalent mobile client yet, and it’s still missing some key features.
- Comment on Welcoming Discord users amidst the challenge of Age Verification 2 weeks ago:
This is my experience with it so far. The bones are there but the current clients are all far from a replacement.
- Comment on Mewgenics recouped its development cost in the first 3 hours 2 weeks ago:
I sunk a couple hours into it today, pretty good stuff so far, though strategy games aren’t usually my forte so I’m just full sending cats out at random lmao
It’s unmistakably an Edmund game, that’s for sure.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 for Nintendo Switch 2 likely axed, as Take-Two says it’s ‘paused’ development | VGC 3 weeks ago:
I played through it once (twice?) and put a good amount of time into endgame. Fun game for a bit, better than 3 at least, but god the performance is abysmal.
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
All the random bullshit they kept adding and the emphasis on hats are what made me stop playing it around that time. Definitely want to give this a shot
- Comment on Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties Demo Available Now | RPGFan 5 weeks ago:
I wasn’t the biggest fan of Gaiden (the Daidoji in general are imo one of the worst plot devices they’ve ever introduced), but 7 was phenomenal for sure. 3, 4, and 5 are admittedly all over the place and products of the time, but each has their merits.
Never go for Y5’s platinum completion though. Worst mistake of my life.
- Comment on Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties Demo Available Now | RPGFan 5 weeks ago:
It’s sad how much this franchise has fallen off since Nagoshi left. The demo may have been some of the worst combat and visuals I’ve experienced in this series, and I’ve 100%'d every single game. A clunky mess in an oversaturated world with 3 movesets that all feel like amateur modpacks. Plus Rikiya’s recast is extremely jarring especially next to Mikio, they brought back the annoying friendship thing from IW/Pirates and made it worse, so many issues already.
And that’s just the demo experience, let alone how the full game recast Hamazaki with a known sex pest (should’ve kept the original model but with a new VA, since the old VA was actually even worse in that regard).
- Comment on Dragon Age veteran says scrapped Anthem Next "could have been" up there with No Man's Sky's legendary turnaround 1 month ago:
C-suite drove that game into the ground with dogshit decisions for the past 3-4 years, and that’s just the game itself- the way that studio treats their devs is abysmal.
- Comment on How TF2 Still Makes Millions (With No Updates) 1 month ago:
I’ve been eyeballing this one for a while, along with OpenFortress. Also found Gold Rush today which seems to be EXACTLY what I’m looking for (and the things they’re avoiding are literally the reasons I stopped playing TF2 around 2011ish). Unfortunately the playercounts for these sorts of mods are abysmally low.
- Comment on After GOTY pull, Clair Obscur devs draw line in sand: 'Everything will be made by humans by us' 2 months ago:
Yeah this is something that keeps getting completely lost in this conversation.
The assets in question were from development during 2022-2023 at the latest. GenAI image tools at that time were extremely primitive compared to what’s out there now - remember DallE-Mini? That’s the kind of thing they were using. And because these tools hadn’t breached containment yet, literally no one was talking about ethical issues yet. Sandfall was basically just experimenting with brand new tech long before it was “good” and long before anyone was talking about it.
Now? It’s good to see them committed to avoiding it. GenAI is a plague and should be treated as such. But 2022-ish was totally different than today.
- Comment on The biggest video game stinkers of 2025, according to Metacritic 2 months ago:
I was already leaning against getting a Switch 2 when they first announced it, but advertising a tech demo as a paid product sealed it for me.
- Comment on Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage 2 months ago:
A contractor used it for placeholder background assets in 2022 when the best genAI tech available was DallE-Mini and literally no one was even remotely aware of any ethical concerns yet.
Like I get that time feels nonexistent since 2020 but people seem to forget genAI was literally not even a known thing until 2024 at the earliest.
Today genAI and all those who support it in any capacity deserve to rot in hell, and it shouldn’t even be used for placeholders or concepts at any stage in the process. That’s a given. But why are we applying 2025 standards to something clearly done at a time before anyone knew anything about this shit?
- Comment on Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage 2 months ago:
GenAI shouldn’t be used in any part of the process, including concepts and placeholders.
That being said, the assets that slipped through in E33 were from 2022. The most powerful publicly available genAI tool at the time was fuckin DallE-Mini, which basically just spit out fuzzy messes. None of the ethical concerns were common knowledge yet, Altman and his ilk were basically nobodies at the time, this was far before any of the current tools and companies that are driving everything to hell.
On top of that, there’s a dogshit article going around where Sandfall says they “use a small bit of AI” internally, and elaborate that they’re referring to Unreal machine learning tools and such, not genAI.
Fuck genAI, fuck Altman, and fuck anyone who intentionally uses any of this shit today, but the E33 case is a literal non-issue. They had 2022 fuzzy garbage slip through the cracks, immediately removed it, and there’s absolutely nothing to indicate that they’re using the modern, problematic tech today.
The only issue here is that there’s no reason for it to be considered an indie game. That’s it.
- Comment on Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage 2 months ago:
Also based on development timelines, these couple of textures were likely from the DallE-Mini era, long before anyone was even talking about ethical concerns with the tech and before fuckass Altman was a known name.
There’s another article going around where they say they use a “little bit” of AI but they’re very obviously referring to Unreal tools and regular old machine learning.
This whole thing is dramatically overblown. Absolutely fuck genAI and every data center should be bulldozed over. But this is a huge case over literally nothing.
- Comment on Do we have No Man's Sky fans here? 2 months ago:
I think this is why it never quite clicked with me. It’s a gorgeous game and it’s really come such a long way, but personally I could use a bit more direction.
- Comment on Any games I missed in the last 21 months? 2 months ago:
Silksong surprise dropped this September after 7 years with like a 2 month heads up
Clair Obscur Expedition 33 came out of absolutely nowhere and is a work of art in every way
Deltarune chapters 3 and 4 finally launched, 3 is fun but 4 is incredible.
I think Balatro came out in that timeframe, and CloverPit in a similar vein this year (though the latter’s most recent update is frankly terrible and hopefully most of the charges will be reverted in the next update)
Ball X Pit becomes more of an idle game once you make progress, but it’s a great little casual take on Breakout, with a fair bit of grinding for completion.
Eden Ring Nightreign is an interesting take on the formula and IMO a far better game than its original counterpart
Alan Wake 2 may have been 2023, my memory’s a bit fuzzy, but I think if anything they dropped a decent sized update last year.
Mycopunk is a fantastic early access FPS, coop emphasis and super chaotic
Path of Exile 2’s early access is phase is finally nearing its end. Game has solid bones
Ninja Gaiden Ragebound is pretty underrated, first modern game in the series that builds on the classic NES formula instead
Antonblast is a great little Wario-inspired platformer. Not as speedy as Pizza Tower, but really tight.
Yakuza Pirates I guess, though I’d argue it’s legitimately the worst game in the franchise. It’s not bad but it’s not good.
Witchfire is another early access FPS about to hit 1.0. It’s been out for a few years now but they’ve been really cracking down on the updates lately.
These couple years saw a huge resurgence of casual party-based games. Lethal Company, REPO, and Peak are all fun with the right group, though popularity of the first two is dwindling last I checked. A bit of a fad but they’re fun.
I’ve definitely missed a handful here and got my years wrong in some places, but these have been some standouts for me lately.
- Comment on Left 4 Dead co-creator is directing a mysterious co-op shooter for JJ Abrams' production company, and Sony's going to publish it: "We hope to deliver a bold, innovative experience" 2 months ago:
It feels like so many devs and studios have been trying to bring back the magic of that era but L4D was such a product of the times. Hard to imagine any similar games in that vein succeeding today.
- Comment on Last Epoch players turn on the action RPG for announcing a paid DLC class, tanking its Steam reviews: 'go play Path of Exile instead' 2 months ago:
After ditching D2 last year well past the 10k hour mark, I’ve been bouncing around a bunch of different games, mostly working through the backlog but also looking for a long-term grind to scratch that same itch. Out of everything I’ve tried, PoE2 and Warframe feel like the only ones doing live service “right”, especially the latter. Between both games, the only MTX gripe I have is PoE2’s stash tabs.
Last Epoch had a ton of potential but the team were in way over their heads and forced to start cashing in, and the Krafton buyout was the nail in the coffin. It feels like they just flat out didn’t have the budget to keep it going.
- Comment on Last Epoch players turn on the action RPG for announcing a paid DLC class, tanking its Steam reviews: 'go play Path of Exile instead' 2 months ago:
As soon as Krafton bought them out it wasn’t just downhill from there, it was a steep drop off a cliff. The game had so much promise but got royally fucked.
- Comment on Last Epoch players turn on the action RPG for announcing a paid DLC class, tanking its Steam reviews: 'go play Path of Exile instead' 2 months ago:
Everything is cosmetic last I checked aside from stash tabs, which granted should be earnable in-game, but it’s nothing like an entirely MTX-only class
- Comment on What game is a guilty pleasure of yours? 2 months ago:
For a bit it was Destiny Rising, I quit D2 over a year ago but DR does genuinely do a lot of things much better than the base game and directly addresses a lot of my core complaints that made me quit after 10k hours in the first place. Stupid mobile gacha game with predatory monetization out the ass, and I was shrugging aside the handful of AI NPC voicelines.
Needless to say I came to my senses and dropped it entirely on a whim. Can’t support the AI bullshit, I found I’d spent much more than I thought on the game already, and the endgame is entirely just p2w or get a handful of mats you need every 2 weeks.
That entire franchise is just a warehouse full of monkey paws
- Comment on What is your favorite Metroidvania? 3 months ago:
You know at first I didn’t really think it would be considered one, but looking back you’re absolutely right. I really need to replay those games.
- Comment on Figured I'd join in sharing what I'm playing- my platinum team ☺️ 3 months ago:
I love how so many of these old games has custom servers up and running. Metroid Prime Hunters apparently has a thriving community too (though I left the biggest discord as soon as I joined because it looks the lead admin is literally a DHS nazi 💀)
The bigger hurdle really is the DS’s wifi compatibility since WEP is so outdated and insecure.
