graymess

Psychonauts 2. Was a huge fan of the original on PS2 and I can't believe it's taken me years to try the sequel. The animation, level design, and writing are all at the level of quality and creativity that I wanted to see videogames progress to some day when I was a kid. This is a playable DreamWorks film.

I don't even remember the last time Stephanie Sterling did anything like this, so it was just a weird blip. Not that she doesn't goof a bunch. Still a great channel to stay up to date on the things that actually matter in the games industry instead of the usual hype machine shit. The only thing I don't care for on the show is the wrestling stuff and when the editor does some schtick.

Ooh, I want an 8bitdo Steam controller.

The obvious answer would be Black & White and its sequel, which for many is the definitive god game. You're an untouchable god interacting with your world and physically manipulating it with your hand, but you also have a giant animal familiar that you raise to also interact with the people. You create miracles and either help or terrorize the population into following you. Not much combat if that's what you're looking for, but it's a unique game that unfortunately has not seen a worthy successor in 20+ years.

I re-played the first a few years back and it's one of the very few games I've 100%'d. Despite the years long gap since my last time playing, it still felt like I just jumped back into the world. So far I'm liking the new characters, but I do miss the original cast of camp kids.

I will say the constant references to the in-between VR exclusive game is frustrating. That feels like a crucial bit of story being dangled over my head that I know I'm never going to see because a VR headset is just not in the cards for me for at least the next few years. Maybe I just need to watch a Let's Play.

This is probably one of the more active communities I'm in, actually. Lemmy's just not that big, I guess? And that's fine with me. I don't need an endless scroll of posts daily. I catch up on my subscribed pages within 20 minutes each day. But if someone wants to encourage more conversation I'm all for it.

As for what I'm playing this month, I just got a used Steam Deck and that's dramatically opened up opportunities for me to play through my PC games that I haven't gotten around to. Started Psychonauts 2 and I'm pretty impressed with how little Double Fine had to change since 2005. It feels like 20 years just never happened and it's so far a very natural progression of the first game. Having a great time with it.

Jak 2 (OpenGOAL) on the pre-owned Steam Deck I bought on Tuesday. Just very excited to be playing PS2 games on a portable device.

Great water

After Oblivion, I really wished I had the option to quick load my last save.

Call it whatever you want, but all I see is a weirdly unexpected avenue for potential solidarity against a major arms manufacturer. Hell, I'll call it woke if it helps turn Americans against the fuckers building bombs.

Steam is already the biggest fish by far in the digital games market for PC. Only reason for them to do this is if they're worried about losing that dominance. Basically, is Epic keeping them up at night enough to warrant a major push into a new hardware loss leader?

I realize I'm biased having experienced this era at my most influential (as another user easily defined it as ages 12 - 22), but this was definitely it for me. I only had a Gameboy before I finally had a PS2. The big mascot character games of this console were formative for me. Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper. Kingdom Hearts and Shadow of the Colossus were everything to me. Tons of other huge titles made this generation.

But it's the weird little games that I think about fondly. Katamari became a franchise, but it was just a funny novel idea when it dropped on the PS2. Kya: Dark Lineage, an adventure/fighting game absolutely packed with fun ideas from a studio that just made racing games prior. Magic Pengel - basically DIY Pokemon - was pretty much everything I wanted in a game. Even Eye Toy, which completely sucked and barely worked, offered a new way to play games.

Things were just different then. I think it was maybe the last time we thought of games by their budgets. Most titles were what we would maybe call AA these days, something that almost doesn't exist anymore. Where indie games didn't exist yet, but small studios were prolific. For me, any game that let you run around as a fairly detailed 3D character in a cool setting was magic to me in a way the flat, pixelated worlds on my GBC never were. The worlds in my PS2 were believable.