cobysev
@cobysev@lemmy.world
- Comment on Leave it to a Bezos-owned company to confuse customers and mislead them for profit. 4 hours ago:
I still don’t understand why anyone would ever pay for access to news articles. There are plenty of free and legitimate articles on the Internet, and public access TV still broadcasts news. You never need to pay anyone.
Honestly, putting a price on access to news just makes me not trust that organization. It feels like a scam, like paying for bottled water when water is one of the most abundant resources in the world.
Paid subscriptions are only a thing because people bought into it and normalized it instead of boycotting it. That’s why everything is a subscription nowadays and no one can just buy and own a product now. We have to spend our lives paying a regular fee for access to something we never own.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 days ago:
37 was the year I started planning my retirement. At 38, I officially retired. I started growing a beard and was surprised to find a white patch to one side on my chin.
Now at 41, my entire chin has turned white and I have salt-and-pepper hair throughout my beard and head hair.
37 truly is a magical age.
- Comment on Best Co-Op Games? 4 days ago:
I posted a review here earlier this year, but A Way Out was an excellent 2-player co-op game! I really enjoyed it. Story rich puzzles with some action interspersed. And it’s split-screen even if you’re playing online, so you can see what your partner is up to and coordinate with them. The ending was heart-wrenching too! Such an emotionally impacting story. Check out my review for a spoiler-free intro to that game.
- Comment on Best Co-Op Games? 4 days ago:
Diablo 3
My wife, two friends, and I all played Diablo IV online together. We beat the main campaign together and had a lot of fun with it. We’re trying to beat the expansion campaign too, but my wife and one friend dropped out, so it’s just been me and a buddy powering through it.
That’s a game where you can just have fun dicking around in the world, even if there isn’t an objective. And it has plenty of endgame content to keep you entertained after you beat the campaign.
- Comment on 4 days ago:
Sounds like the author of this article didn’t understand the gameplay mechanics. It’s supposed to be a slow stealth game that requires patience and strategy and avoiding threats, not an action FPS game where you run through and shoot everyone you encounter.
The camouflage mechanic he mentions, almost as an aside, is crucial to sneaking through levels. Moving from tall grass to fallen leaves to swampland can drastically change your camouflage level, requiring you to quickly optimize for the environment or be detected. You need to pay attention to your surroundings and be very methodical in your approach, or risk being detected easily.
I’ve played for 40 minutes and I’m still in the intro area. Granted, part of that is due to another common trope of Hideo Kojima games: lots of cutscenes and story-heavy exposition.
But just learning how to sneak around and avoid detection takes time and patience. The first guard I encountered, I had to sit still for maybe 5 minutes and watch him slowly patrol around the small area, so I could figure out his patterns and approach him… and he still detected me when I got too close! Moving makes too much noise, so you need to wait for your target to approach you before going after them. It’s a process, and if you don’t have the patience to sit and wait for opportunities to present themselves, then this game is probably not for you.
Nostalgia does help with gameplay like this. Metal Gear Solid 3 is my favorite of the MGS series, and I am thoroughly enjoying playing its remake with modern controls and graphics. Going back and playing the original game can be difficult after getting used to today’s modern controls in games, but this remake includes both classic and modern controls, so you choose how you want to play.
Also, this game just dropped yesterday for advanced release. That’s hardly enough time to play through it and write a decent review. This article must’ve been written in a rush, which may contribute to the author’s poor experience.
I actually write reviews for video games and post them to !games@lemmy.world. Just as a hobby. You can check my account’s post history to see them all, or go to my blog where I’m archiving them (This link). I’m excited to write one for Metal Gear Solid ∆: Snake Eater. But I need to play a bit more of the game before I feel I can give a proper review, so keep an eye out for a new post in the coming week or two.
- Comment on Somebody has turned a daft English cheese rolling festival into an even dafter free Steam game 5 days ago:
Cheese Rolling on Steam. Saved you a click.
- Comment on Do you think he'll respond? 5 days ago:
hunter2
- Comment on "Now pendejo, shall we shee what short of shwordsman you've become?" 6 days ago:
I literally just saw this movie for the first time last night. Long overdue. It was an excellent film!
Before anyone asks, it’s from Highlander (1986)
- Submitted 1 week ago to games@lemmy.world | 4 comments
- Comment on State names of the US if there were no letters "A" "M" "E" "R" "I" "C" "A" 1 week ago:
“Wshngton” is basically unchanged. It still sounds the same either way you spell it.
- Comment on Games Where Nothing Happens (SPOILERS for various game plots) 2 weeks ago:
I personally really enjoyed New Dawn, but it gets a lot of hate from the community. Maybe because each Far Cry game is a completely unique game, and New Dawn is just a continuation of Far Cry 5. I read a lot of reviews that said it didn’t bring anything new to the franchise. Of course! It’s just part 2 of a previous game! You get to see what the world is like 17 years after the events of Project Eden, so the map is the same and a lot of the gameplay mechanics are the same. You do have a community that you’re trying to build up; restoring order and safety amongst survivors of the nuclear fallout, so that’s unique.
One thing I didn’t like was that your character from Far Cry 5 (the Deputy) makes an appearance in New Dawn. Turns out they’ve been brainwashed by Joseph Seed after spending 17 years trapped in a bunker alone with him, so they’re fiercely loyal to Joseph now. Fortunately, Joseph is not the enemy in this game. You actually ally with Joseph’s new group New Eden, so the Deputy (now called The Judge) becomes a gun-for-hire.
I did not like Primal. I played a couple hours of it and just couldn’t get into it. It’s more of a survival game than a Far Cry game. You have to craft everything to survive and you have a stamina bar that depletes unless you regularly eat and sleep. Fast-traveling takes a huge chunk out of stamina, which is annoying and defeats the purpose of “fast” traveling, but I guess it’s realistic.
Unlike most Far Cry games where you’re isolated in a region, trying to overthrow a dictator-wannabe or something, Primal is more about building a community and eventually becoming chief of your own tribe. Sure, there are other tribes to fight against, but it just felt weird not having a solid objective besides surviving. Maybe there’s more plot to it and I just didn’t play enough to get into it.
I still haven’t played Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon. I own both of them and I’ve been meaning to get around to it. I’m an '80s child, so I love the retro-futuristic aesthetic of Blood Dragon. Are they related in story at all, or is Blood Dragon just a standalone expansion for Far Cry 3? If it’s unrelated to Far Cry 3’s plot, I might just jump into it and check it out.
- Comment on Games Where Nothing Happens (SPOILERS for various game plots) 3 weeks ago:
It’s my favorite of the Far Cry games. I love the setting and gameplay! I actually wrote a review on it recently and posted it here to Lemmy.
- Comment on Games Where Nothing Happens (SPOILERS for various game plots) 3 weeks ago:
I don’t think the nuclear explosion was related to Joseph Seed. He was just a “prophet,” claiming the end times were here. The nukes were going to happen regardless, he was just trying to save as many people as he could, whether they wanted to be saved or not. He was the villain, but only in an “ends justify the means” sense. In the end, he was actually right; the world did fall to nuclear holocaust.
- Comment on Games Where Nothing Happens (SPOILERS for various game plots) 3 weeks ago:
Similarly, Far Cry 5. At the beginning, when you’re told to arrest Joseph Seed, you can choose to just turn around and walk out the door. The sheriff will agree with you, saying it’s best to just leave him and his cult alone and it would’ve only ended in your deaths if you tried to arrest him. Then the game ends.
- Comment on Shamelessly stolen from Reddit 3 weeks ago:
As a military veteran, this makes me a little sad… but the whole military discount thing has always made me feel weird. I mean, I’m no hero. I spent 20 years sitting at a desk, fixing computers. Why should I deserve a discount over any other office worker?
I currently live in an area far away from any military bases, so I’ve mostly stopped asking about military/veteran discounts. Most people here aren’t used to military being around this area anyway so there’s rarely a discount to offer. And I don’t really care if I get a discount or not; it doesn’t hurt me to pay full price.
But I’ve definitely worked with service members who would boycott businesses near our bases if they refused to provide a military discount. Some people get really entitled about their status. Those were the worst people I had to deal with in the service.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #64 - Enshrouded (Revisited) 4 weeks ago:
I’ve definitely wasted many evenings building in this game. I actually had to cut off one of my friends; he was exclusively building in my server and would message me all the time, asking me to boot up Enshrouded and leave it running overnight so he could play.
There is an Enshrouded Dedicated Server you can set up so the game is always running in the background for people to connect to. But I’ve had problems getting it working, and I’d rather not dedicate resources to hosting a game in the background if I only have a couple friends pop in once in a while.
So my friends mostly don’t play unless I’m playing too, which has encouraged me to spend oodles of time in Enshrouded over the past year. There’s a reason it’s my #3 most played game despite only being out for a year and a half.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #64 - Enshrouded (Revisited) 4 weeks ago:
When I first started playing, when lore was just a small thing you could piece together by reading bits of scrolls and journals scattered around the world, I theorized that The Shroud was keeping the world trapped in stasis. That’s why, no matter how much you changed, it’d always reset back to its original state after you left the area for 30 minutes (or logged out and back in again).
The Flame Altars kept The Shroud out, so you could enact permanent change near them. And your own Flameborn soul ensured nothing changed while you stuck nearby. But no changes would stick anywhere else in the world.
Of course, now there is tons of new lore in the game and my theory is practically debunked. But it’s still my little fan theory. I’m hoping that the final game will have an endgame plot to rid the land of The Shroud permanently. But I’ve been playing so long now, I’m kind of used to it perpetually being around and I’m not all that concerned with its tenacity now.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #64 - Enshrouded (Revisited) 4 weeks ago:
I haven’t heard anything specific from the developers about wiping gameplay for a final product, but I will say that I’ve been playing since it released and I’ve never once had my progress wiped. The devs have been pretty good about upgrading your progress to match the current build so you don’t need to start over. Even with radical changes, your base building is left untouched.
A friend and I spent weeks building a massive pyramid and temple on an empty hill once. One day, we logged in and found that a new village had been added to the game, near the top of that hill. Our base was completely untouched; everything we changed in our build area stayed the same.
It was weird to see a village spawned right up to our build area, then get cut off right at the border. But we were glad to see that our progress was left untouched.
Even stuff like XP and leveling has been progressing instead of resetting. I maxed out my character’s level and gear and spent months just exploring the game and building stuff, not worrying about character progression. Then when the latest zone unlocked for exploration, I noticed I could level up even higher and upgrade even more abilities in my skill tree. None of my progress was reset for the new zone.
Heck, even with a formally maxed out character, the new zone was surprisingly challenging and I had to work to progress my character’s stats and equipment even more in order to survive there.
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to games@lemmy.world | 10 comments
- Comment on Have most people never seen a full starry night sky 4 weeks ago:
When I was a kid (30+ years ago), I used to lie in the grass in my yard at night and stare at the stars. I grew up in the forested countryside, so there wasn’t much light pollution and I could clearly make out constellations.
I joined the US military and left home for 20 years. When I retired, I moved back into my childhood home to help my aging father.
One of the first things I noticed is that almost all the stars are gone. Light pollution from the nearby cities has gotten so bad, my night sky is just a haze now. I can’t see stars clearly anymore.
I’ve read that light pollution has gotten so bad globally that there isn’t anywhere left on Earth - not even Antarctica - that doesn’t experience light pollution to some degree. I wish I could go up on a shuttle and see the stars from outside our atmosphere. That must be such an amazing view, completely unfiltered. Like living underwater your whole life and then finally seeing clearly when you lift your head out of the water for the first time.
- Comment on Happy noises* 1 month ago:
Hodor 👀
- Comment on Anon is Illiterate 1 month ago:
When I was in the US Air Force, I was deployed to a US Marine camp once, and listening to those guys chat among themselves was always a treat. You never knew what dumbass comments were going to come out of their mouths.
One day, one of the young corporals mentioned that, while traveling to another base, he got stuck waiting for a connecting flight between bases for about a week and he was so bored, he read A BOOK. He stressed the fact that he’s never read an entire book from cover to cover before, but he did on this layover because he was so extremely bored.
To my surprise, the other Marines just nodded along, like this made perfect sense to them. Not a single person harassed him for never reading a book before (and they harass each other all the time for the simplest things).
I mean, we poke fun at Marines for being dumb. They call themselves jarheads, which is an allusion to the fact that their heads are as empty as a jar. But it still blows my mind to hear the dumb things they say sometimes.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #63 - The Alters 1 month ago:
Yeah, that’s the plan. I’m leaving the originals alone, I’ll just make a new post for those games.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #63 - The Alters 1 month ago:
It can definitely seem unfair at times. I mentioned in another comment that it feels like the game has a story it wants to tell and it punishes you for straying too far from the plot. Fortunately, it marks your conversation choices, so if you have to redo conversations, you know which path you previously took.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #63 - The Alters 1 month ago:
I think 02 must be the sheep.
Ah! That makes sense! I wondered if there was going to be some twist in the plot where the original Jan was an alter himself (the actual #2) and the real original died with the rest of the crew. But I didn’t want to speculate and inadvertently spoil a good twist.
I’ve watched thousands of movies and TV shows and played a lot of games, and my wife gets mad at me because I’m pretty good at spotting a twist coming a mile away now. So I do my best not to speculate where the plot is going in these posts. But you’re right, it might just be as simple as counting how many clones have been made.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #63 - The Alters 1 month ago:
Yeah, there definitely seems to be a story the game wants to tell, and you’re punished for veering too far from the plot. I’ve definitely restarted a save or two to undo a bad choice.
I do like that it highlights your previous conversation choices, so you know which route you picked and could try another option in your next run. That definitely makes it a bit easier.
I’m excited to see what new alters you create and what their personalities will be like, but I’m also kind of dreading the personnel management system getting too complex.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #63 - The Alters 1 month ago:
Thanks! I do this as a hobby and would probably get burnt out if I had to do this for work. I attempted to make daily posts for a while as a personal writing challenge and I got to #50 before I had to take a break.
But my posting would definitely be more consistent if someone paid me to do it. 😆 I need to go back and redo the first handful of posts I’ve made here, since I started out just posting a single screenshot. It’d be nice to actually discuss those games in depth too.
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #63 - The Alters 1 month ago:
Thank you! I enjoy discussing video games (and movies, but my movie review blog has been abandoned for the past couple years), and I’ve always wanted to find someone who goes into a little depth on games; someone who introduces people to the premise of a game and gets them interested. The little summary on Steam isn’t always enough to let me know if it’s going to be fun or not.
Since I couldn’t find any content like that, I decided to just create it myself. I’m retired young and I got nothing else going on, so why not?
- Comment on Random Screenshots of my Games #63 - The Alters 1 month ago:
It’s published by the same studio (11 bit studios), but they each have different developers. 11 bit studios also created The Alters, but Starward Industries created The Invincible.
- Submitted 1 month ago to games@lemmy.world | 15 comments
