ampersandrew

joined 6 months ago
[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 points 12 minutes ago

It was also famous for having multiplayer modes that were just fun and didn't ask you to commit your life to them. Some of those multiplayer modes were really cool.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 points 22 minutes ago

They sell to the type of person who only buys a few video games per year. They're easy to play, they look nice, and they have a lot of content for the money, so you can stretch your dollar.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 points 28 minutes ago* (last edited 5 minutes ago) (3 children)

It seems to be resonating pretty damn well for them. In fact, the competitive multiplayer has been praised for its simplicity and feeling a lot like the kind of multiplayer that we used to get so much of back in the 360 era.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 14 points 2 hours ago

Games got bigger to their own detriment. Halo and Gears of War are open world games now, and they're worse off for it. Assassin's Creed games used to be under 20 hours, and now they're over 45. Not every game is worse for being longer, as two of my favorite games in the past couple of years are over 100 hours long, clocking in at three times the length of their predecessors, but it's much easier to keep a game fun for 8-15 hours than it is for some multiple of that, and it makes the game more expensive to make, raising the threshold for success.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago
  1. No

  2. They sell video games. A lot of them.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

The family is buying the shares as well, with Tencent having a minority ownership. Or might, rather. This is a consideration. It isn't definitely happening.

 

Tencent would be capped at a 10% stake. The Guillemot family would remain in control, just the way they want it.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

I'd second Pillars of Eternity II except that it's not actually on sale. It also doesn't have gamepad controls, which is disappointing, so Steam Deck controls can be kind of slow.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

I agree that the game should have a tutorial. The problem with the temple trial is that it only caters to one play style, so it's not a good tutorial. I'd call the first game's tutorial the cave with a handful of rats.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 15 points 6 hours ago

This whole article sucks. Here were the choices for player preference:

  • PVE
  • Couch co-op
  • Online PVP
  • Single player

Is it true that most players prefer single player games? Maybe. Last year's unanimous game of the year was largely considered a "single player game", but while it's definitely not live service, it also won the award for best multiplayer. What does Halo count as? Halo 2 and 3 are single player, couch co-op, online co-op, couch PVP (not an option in this survey), and online PVP. If Halo 2 is your favorite game, it could be for any of those reasons, but they also all play off of one another to form a richer game as a whole. I wouldn't want to exclude one of those things in favor of another.

Single-player games are a safer bet for new games...Make no mistake: the costs to make AAA single-player, non-live service games have inflated to astronomic levels. Leaks from Insomniac showed that PlayStation’s AAA flagship games, like Spider-Man 2, have budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But there is a growing opportunity for AAA studios to make leaner single-player games.

Look, especially when you factor in costs, like the paragraph after this does, it's correct to say that a safer bet is the one that can be made more cheaply, but even these examples of successes are cherry-picked. I could just as easily bring up Tales of Kenzera: Zau, Immortals of Aveum, or Alone in the Dark to show why offline single player games are risky.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

What part of that was executive meddling?

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (4 children)

I just played through it this year for the first time. It was overall very good, but the beginning and end of it are pretty rough. The beginning is tedious unless you're playing a strength build, and the end is some real point and click adventure game moon logic to find out how to get to the final area and, in some ways, through it, that I would have never figured out without a walkthrough.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

It's also got great VOIP functionality. And it's been a hot minute since I've used IRC, but you can automate tons of things in Discord around things like user roles. I play an old fighting game that has no ranked system, and all of that functionality, including running weekly tournaments, is handled by a Discord bot that runs on a Raspberri Pi.

 

The Prompt

Anecdotally, I've seen a lot of people jaded with modern gaming. I understand why. If you only see the games that have the most marketing, which are the ones you're most likely to see for obvious reasons, then you're primarily seeing the likes of AAA games with second-job-esque battle pass FOMO tactics, loot box gambling, pay to win, and constant reminders that you're missing out on the full experience of the game like coming across fan favorite characters in the DLC of an already-expensive Star Wars game. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data", but it could be this fatigue with the games that the average person is aware of that has led to a drop in spending and the crash that the industry is currently facing (but let's not sugar coat it; there are surely other factors, too). I sympathize with these people, but respectfully, there's a whole wide world out there of great games that never ask for a dime after it's in your possession, so let's call out those games and spread the word.

The Rules

  1. One game per top level comment, with the game name behind a "#" symbol so that it forms a heading, and platforms it's available on in parentheses. Leave a brief synopsis with no spoilers and a brief critique. I'll be starting us off with a number of examples. Upvote the ones you agree with, and leave a comment on the top level one for discussion.
  2. The game should have no paid DLC, no announced paid DLC, and feel like a complete product as it stands right now. I actually don't mind the most common types of DLC, like what you would find in the Paradox model, but I know there's a large enough contingent of folks who really do mind, so any DLC whatsoever is a deal-breaker for this thread. I'm making an exception for soundtrack and artbook DLC since, as far as I know, the existence of this stuff doesn't bother anyone and just allows for avenues for certain artists to get a better cut for their work from super fans. I'm not making an exception for cosmetic DLC like you'd find in V Rising, as innocuous as I personally find it to be.
  3. The game's first release must have been in 2024. By this, I mean that if it came out on PS5 two years ago but launched on PC this year, it doesn't count, so no God of War: Ragnarok. No collections of old games like Marvel vs. Capcom.
  4. No early access games, except for games that were in early access and hit v1.0 this year. So no Palworld, but Satisfactory is on the table if you'd like to recommend it. I personally didn't care for it, but if you did, feel free to list it!
  5. Only games you've played thoroughly enough to be sure you'd recommend it. If you only started playing the early chapters or levels, maybe let someone else recommend it, just in case the quality nosedives later on. I'm personally only recommending games I've finished or beaten, though that definition admittedly becomes challenging with the likes of UFO 50.
 

If you don't retain some kind of actual ownership, they will not be allowed to use terms like "buy" or "purchase" on the store page button. I hope there aren't huge holes in this that allow bad actors to get around it, but I certainly loathe the fact that there's no real way to buy a movie or TV show digitally. Not really.

EDIT: On re-reading it, there may be huge holes in it. Like if they just "clearly tell you" how little you're getting when you buy it, they can still say "buy" and "purchase".

 

They seem to be very caught off guard by Star Wars: Outlaws' underperformance, and after investor pressure, are trying to massively course correct. This is what happens when you vote with your dollars!

 

A half hour, 20 PS5 games, at least one PSVR2, ahead of TGS.

200
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by ampersandrew@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world
 

$200M before the Sony acquisition and $200M after. It's a little hard to believe. The story seems to only be coming from Colin Moriarty right now, but I trust Jordan Middler to consider it at least reasonably plausible if he wrote it up for VGC.

UPDATE: Sources not corroborating $400M number.

https://80.lv/articles/multiple-sources-dispute-concord-s-usd400-million-budget/

 

$700, and the side by sides look barely different, from my perspective. The chat seemed to have the same opinion.

 

Luckily it's DRM-free. Back up your installers. I wanted to call attention to this, because in a very unusual move, it's being removed even for people who own a copy, whereas usually stores will only remove a game from sale and still host the files for existing owners to download.

 

The virtual rival thing could be cool. There's a lot of room for it to go wrong, and we're no worse off if it does. But replay takeover is huge. This is the holy grail of fighting game training mode features. You can go into a replay of a match and correct the things you did wrong or find answers to situations that are difficult or time consuming to recreate yourself in training mode.

 

I know most are probably talking about Path of Exile II or Diablo IV's latest expansion, but those are online-only, and I don't care even a little bit about "seasonal" content, so this is the one I'm excited for.

 

$50 for the base game, $70 with DLC included.

Steam link provided. Also available on Epic.

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