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Ravenbound demo - the premise is interesting (and has similarities to the premise behind Crowfall, RIP), you're a spirit raven who can possess vessels, which acts as an excuse for its roguelike nature. You die, you lose the vessel and what you've collected on it. It's a single player game set in an open world, with a Souls-ish like combat with some new twists.
The progression system is kind of weird, you find cards and you need mana to use (equip) them, however you can only get mana from finding cards that give you mana, so... it just kind of feels like you're running around with a big stack of gear, hoping you luck out so you can equip some of it. And for some reason by default the chests are all cursed and will start putting Bad Cards in your hand if you open them; apparently you can cleanse them, but the game never explains how and no one in their discussion threads knew how either.
It's made by Avalanche Studios, which had me very confused as to why the game felt so rough and janky... but then I saw it was made by the team that made Generation Zero, so that cleared that up. The world feels very barren and uninteresting, you're mainly running around an empty forest and then run into ruined clearings where 2-3 enemies await you. Elden Ring this is not.
And then I discovered it's an online-only single player (only) game and noped out hard. I have enough dead games in my library, I'm not buying another.
Vampire Survivors' bestiary is very funny, which is why it's disappointing/ annoying that you (seemingly) can't read it properly on console (Xbox). Any entry that is longer than the text box ends in trailing dots, but then there's no button that selects the entry and lets you read the rest of it? Unless I'm just dumb, but I don't think so.
0
BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
A story I've been working on for a while, the result of many, many interviews: an inside look at how draconian noncompete contracts and "conflict of interest" clauses restrict and stifle creativity, and have created a culture of fear for game developers:
Interesting piece with a lot of interesting anecdotes
I am comforted by how many people just ignore that shit, at least. TV often attempts similar restrictions on "outside development," especially for younger writers who're likelier to be cowed by that kind of language in a contract. Anecdotally, I've yet to meet a single successful writer who ever, ever abided by those clauses.
+11
BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
Personally, I never thought Spoiler was a great superhero name. I preferred it when she was Batgirl. Or even Robin. She gets skipped over as having been a Robin so often. I know it was short, but she did headline the Robin solo book during her run.
At least Wayne Family Adventures remembers she was Robin, even if she is back to being Spoiler there too (and Cassandra is Orphan which is an even worse name).
This is 3 pages ago, and I apologize, but I am completely opposite. Steph is best as Spoiler, for a lot of narrative and thematic reasons, and Cass is best as Batgirl, because Orphan is indeed a terrible name.
Plan B: Terraform This is a resource manager/sim game about terraforming. I tried it because I really liked Surviving Mars and Per Astra. I think the very longterm overarching goal of "terraform this planet" really makes a city-builder type game work well for me. This one is not so good, at least now. It's a bit more focused on managing supply chains. Everything has to get dumped to a depot between steps. So you'll have Iron Extractor>Depot>Factory>Depot>Factory>Depot>Finishing Facility. Each finishing facility builds one type of building, so you need to duplicate that a few times so you can make each building in the chain. Then you start having to connect stuff with roads. I'm convinced there was a bug or the game was unfinished here, because setting routes on roads was really fiddly and complicated. I think I'd like it better if they removed the finishing facility and just let you build building with resources.
Voidtrain This is a survival building game. The hook is you're on a train running through a mostly-empty void. You start with a handcar, looks like you can upgrade and build more carriages as you go. You can jump off the car and 'swim' through space to go grab resources, your typical wood/metal/chemicals. Take them back to your train and build stuff. Your character is tethered to the car, you can't go very far from it, so I ended up leaving the car rolling at its low automatic speed and swimming around it grabbing stuff. It has the mechanic I don't like of having a 'research station' where you need to spend resources to unlock each new component, so you basically need to pay twice for each furnace, workshop, lab table, etc. Other than that, kind of neat.
Dark and Darker This is a first person PvPvE dungeon crawler with D&D-like classes. I couldn't get the matchmaking to get me into a game, either solo or partied. My buddy was interested, but I have no idea how it actually is, but the menus made it seem like Hunt Showdown or the newly popular extraction type games. There's a free dungeon with worse drops, then one you have to pay gold (presumably from the free dungeon) to get a ticket into.
Been playing some Meet Your Maker this morning and I love it. I didn't realize how much I needed Orcs Must Die! + Castle Doctrine.
The joy of that begrudgingly respectful "oh you motherfucker" when you're killed by a clever trap is only surpassed by the "haha sucker" when you're watching a replay of someone dying to your own traps.
Been playing some Meet Your Maker this morning and I love it. I didn't realize how much I needed Orcs Must Die! + Castle Doctrine.
The joy of that begrudgingly respectful "oh you motherfucker" when you're killed by a clever trap is only surpassed by the "haha sucker" when you're watching a replay of someone dying to your own traps.
one level i played the person had put the disappearing block right in front of an easy to shoot trap, so when you went to get your dart, you could fall through to a lava block.
Dark and Darker may be buckling under its own success. It had like 150k concurrent players.
But yeah, it's a melee and magic Tarkov, with very slow melee swing speeds. One of the main advantages is that it has nearly instant map resets (I guess as long as its working).
It looks like a Wizardry BR. Very square corridors and maps.
I figured there would be another Ashina Elite miniboss, and man am I unhappy with the red-eyed redux.
did it, but it took way too long.
dodging seemed random. Sometimes it would feel like I was way too early, but I'd be fine; and others I'm clearly safe physically, but I'd get hit.
follow-up attacks were just strange. Sometimes I'd hit him once, and then he'd guard; sometimes that guard would be a deflection; sometimes I'd nick him twice; and sometimes he'd just step back and immediately attack again. Occasionally he'd just decide to let me hit him while he calmly puts his sword back in the scabbard, and that always felt wrong.
the thought that keeps coming to mind is that most of these fights feel like a conversation. Attacks, responses, dodges, deflections, guards. In that model, he feels like he can interrupt himself. He's also a boring conversationalist, with just the one thing to say. On the rare occasions he'd say the other thing, it was always a surprise. Not delightful in the least, but surprising.
--
Emma says that she'll give me something if I know a particular technique. Is that found in one of the esoteric texts or is it something I'll gather in the world?
Tamin on
0
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
Okay, so, Felicity is absolutely a slice of life coming-of-age story of young adults going through college (each season is a year of university).
But Felicity's freshmen roommate, Meghan Rotundi, is a party-goth who practices magic.
And, well, in this series magic is real.
As the series progresses, Meghan's spells seem to actually work (with the series never shining too intense a light on that particular fact).
Well, skip ahead to the series finale and the show lands the plane (it's a really great series finale), but, well...
So the series is over, they wrote & filmed their series finale but one of the new show's on the WB's slate just bombs, so the WB comes to J.J. Abrams & Matt Reeves (both are showrunners of Felicity, obviously) and asks them to just produce five bonus episodes. They just need episodes to fill the schedule while they get a new show ready.
So J.J. Abrams & Matt Reeves come up with the idea that a few months after the series finale Felicity Porter is unhappy with how her life has ended up, so she asks her friend Meghan to cast a time-travel spell to send her back to the beginning of their senior year (aka the 4th season).
And the rest of the arc is Felicity coming across as a crazy person as she tries to course-correct her senior year of college. She ends up destroying relationships and getting her best friend killed, because few characters can 100% ruin a situation like Felicity Porter.
The end of this arc, and thus the actual series finale, is Felicity seeking out the help of a New York based warlock (played by Kurt Fuller) to help her cast a ritual to nullify her time-travel spell, which ultimately creates a third reality.
FELICITY IS A PERFECT TV SHOW
+26
minor incidentyou can't swim whenyou've been dead a hundred yearsRegistered User, Transition Teamregular
…WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCK
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
So some people might follow Girlfriend Reviews, a YouTube channel where she reviews games her boyfriend plays. They’ve gotten into twitch streaming, and made the poor decision to stream the new Harry Potter game:
As the person quoting this article mentions, it’s even more disappointing because their reaction to any negativity at all was to act like they were the injured party, while most of the chat was actually being positive and they continued to stream well after this moment. Just super disappointing from some creators I enjoyed.
Goddamnit HiFi Rush, collectables where you don’t tell me which level the one last missing one is on? Why do so many games do this? Just show me a collectables completion on the level select, now I have like 3 or 4 collectables where I’m missing one or two and no idea which one, there’s not even a way to like view a gallery of your acquired collectables
So frustrating
Oh wait there’s a way to check which graffiti you have, but that’s it
Prohass on
0
BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
Goddamnit HiFi Rush, collectables where you don’t tell me which level the one last missing one is on? Why do so many games do this? Just show me a collectables completion on the level select, now I have like 3 or 4 collectables where I’m missing one or two and no idea which one, there’s not even a way to like view a gallery of your acquired collectables
minor incidentyou can't swim whenyou've been dead a hundred yearsRegistered User, Transition Teamregular
I really like a lot of their videos, but they’ve felt decidedly low effort lately (sponsor segments that are like 40% of the video runtime), and their recent Last of Us premiere party video kind of crossed the line from ironic self-deprecation to uncomfortably genuine over getting invited to/making videos about industry events so much so that it kinda squicked me out in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
+3
BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
D.S.O. agent Leon S. Kennedy is on a mission to rescue Dr. Antonio Taylor from kidnappers, when a mysterious woman thwarts his pursuit. Meanwhile, B.S.A.A. agent Chris Redfield is investigating a zombie outbreak in San Francisco, where the cause of the infection cannot be identified. The only thing the victims have in common is that they all visited Alcatraz Island recently. Following that clue, Chris and his team head to the island, where a new horror awaits them. Directed by Eiichiro Hasumi (Assassination Classroom) from a screenplay by Makoto Fukami (Psycho-Pass). Based on Resident Evil, the hit survival-horror game that sold over 130 million copies worldwide, Death Island is a new CG animated film and sequel to Resident Evil: Vendetta. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is distributing the film worldwide excluding Japan Summer 2023.
the tourism board has been lobbying for years to change the name to something other than "death island"
I really like a lot of their videos, but they’ve felt decidedly low effort lately (sponsor segments that are like 40% of the video runtime), and their recent Last of Us premiere party video kind of crossed the line from ironic self-deprecation to uncomfortably genuine over getting invited to/making videos about industry events so much so that it kinda squicked me out in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
The guy is currently making fun of the comments they’re getting, put on a fedora in game and said “me thinks you are transphobic, milady”
They’re basically having a super neoliberal meltdown about it. They don’t specifically hate trans people, so streaming the game is fine. They can’t understand why people would be upset by this in any way.
I really like a lot of their videos, but they’ve felt decidedly low effort lately (sponsor segments that are like 40% of the video runtime), and their recent Last of Us premiere party video kind of crossed the line from ironic self-deprecation to uncomfortably genuine over getting invited to/making videos about industry events so much so that it kinda squicked me out in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
I promise you now that if I ever get even somewhat notable that I will immediately abandon all of my principles if it means I can make a quick buck or even just get to hang out in the same lobby as some c-list celebrity
I really like a lot of their videos, but they’ve felt decidedly low effort lately (sponsor segments that are like 40% of the video runtime), and their recent Last of Us premiere party video kind of crossed the line from ironic self-deprecation to uncomfortably genuine over getting invited to/making videos about industry events so much so that it kinda squicked me out in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
I promise you now that if I ever get even somewhat notable that I will immediately abandon all of my principles if it means I can make a quick buck or even just get to hang out in the same lobby as some c-list celebrity
I mean that is the dream right? Get a moderate touch of success and sell out immediately for peanuts of exposure?
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I'm not sure how you can make a quick buck off of having the correct opinion on Star Citizen, but I bet you can make some money off of being the septic tank filter that Steam's "new releases" list flows through. Put your list of recommendations up on the broader Internet, put it behind a paywall, obvious - but then you monetize it from the other end, too, since plenty of game devs would eagerly pay you to get some exbrosure.
+2
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
You figure Raytheon would give you one of their warcrime objects if they sponsored you?
I remember in the infancy of gamergate I had my heart broken pretty bad by like this formally sex positive YouTuber who did videos about safe sex and talking openly with teenagers about sexuality and sex ed, and finding out that she had apparently just completely turned hard right and changed all of her views to be completely hardcore right wing gamergate nonsense, going ultra Christian and disavowing her previous views
Even worse it apparently started when she dated a YouTuber guy who had these views. Which was a massive red flag and concern. It was the most horrific and sad right turn I’d ever seen and shook me hard enough that I’ve kind of always been prepared for YouTubers and such to disappoint me
Prohass on
+1
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
Maybe let you push the button for the drone that kills a wedding
I remember in the infancy of gamergate I had my heart broken pretty bad by like this formally sex positive YouTuber who did videos about safe sex and talking openly with teenagers about sexuality and sex ed, and finding out that she had apparently just completely turned hard right and changed all of her views to be completely hardcore right wing gamergate nonsense, going ultra Christian and disavowing her previous views
Even worse it apparently started when she dated a YouTuber guy who had these views. It was the most horrific and sad right turn I’d ever seen and shook me hard enough that I’ve kind of always been prepared for YouTubers and such to disappoint me
I always just think of those as a lonesome rhodes moment (a reference to an old andy griffith movie). This person went where she thinks the money is, she's not a true believer shes a mercenary.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
yeah all the people who are like, "well, is it okay if i donate to a charity afterwards?" it's like bro. i don't give a fuck. i'm not your priest you can't just tithe me to make me absolve your sins. just admit your desire to play a mid-ass video game is stronger than all the other emotions happening in your life
+11
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
It is ethical to pirate the game. It is more ethical to pirate it and never play it out of spite
Posts
The progression system is kind of weird, you find cards and you need mana to use (equip) them, however you can only get mana from finding cards that give you mana, so... it just kind of feels like you're running around with a big stack of gear, hoping you luck out so you can equip some of it. And for some reason by default the chests are all cursed and will start putting Bad Cards in your hand if you open them; apparently you can cleanse them, but the game never explains how and no one in their discussion threads knew how either.
It's made by Avalanche Studios, which had me very confused as to why the game felt so rough and janky... but then I saw it was made by the team that made Generation Zero, so that cleared that up. The world feels very barren and uninteresting, you're mainly running around an empty forest and then run into ruined clearings where 2-3 enemies await you. Elden Ring this is not.
And then I discovered it's an online-only single player (only) game and noped out hard. I have enough dead games in my library, I'm not buying another.
Mortaccio chuckled. "You mean the Chaos Emeralds?"
wait what
i had no idea this show was anything other than a slice of life college coming-of-age drama
https://www.humblebundle.com/membership/
https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5va43/noncompete-contracts-video-game-industry
Interesting piece with a lot of interesting anecdotes
I am comforted by how many people just ignore that shit, at least. TV often attempts similar restrictions on "outside development," especially for younger writers who're likelier to be cowed by that kind of language in a contract. Anecdotally, I've yet to meet a single successful writer who ever, ever abided by those clauses.
scourgebringer seems neat but i'm so bad at it
Oh, same, but the moments up until failure are real good.
This is 3 pages ago, and I apologize, but I am completely opposite. Steph is best as Spoiler, for a lot of narrative and thematic reasons, and Cass is best as Batgirl, because Orphan is indeed a terrible name.
Plan B: Terraform This is a resource manager/sim game about terraforming. I tried it because I really liked Surviving Mars and Per Astra. I think the very longterm overarching goal of "terraform this planet" really makes a city-builder type game work well for me. This one is not so good, at least now. It's a bit more focused on managing supply chains. Everything has to get dumped to a depot between steps. So you'll have Iron Extractor>Depot>Factory>Depot>Factory>Depot>Finishing Facility. Each finishing facility builds one type of building, so you need to duplicate that a few times so you can make each building in the chain. Then you start having to connect stuff with roads. I'm convinced there was a bug or the game was unfinished here, because setting routes on roads was really fiddly and complicated. I think I'd like it better if they removed the finishing facility and just let you build building with resources.
Voidtrain This is a survival building game. The hook is you're on a train running through a mostly-empty void. You start with a handcar, looks like you can upgrade and build more carriages as you go. You can jump off the car and 'swim' through space to go grab resources, your typical wood/metal/chemicals. Take them back to your train and build stuff. Your character is tethered to the car, you can't go very far from it, so I ended up leaving the car rolling at its low automatic speed and swimming around it grabbing stuff. It has the mechanic I don't like of having a 'research station' where you need to spend resources to unlock each new component, so you basically need to pay twice for each furnace, workshop, lab table, etc. Other than that, kind of neat.
Dark and Darker This is a first person PvPvE dungeon crawler with D&D-like classes. I couldn't get the matchmaking to get me into a game, either solo or partied. My buddy was interested, but I have no idea how it actually is, but the menus made it seem like Hunt Showdown or the newly popular extraction type games. There's a free dungeon with worse drops, then one you have to pay gold (presumably from the free dungeon) to get a ticket into.
pleasepaypreacher.net
The joy of that begrudgingly respectful "oh you motherfucker" when you're killed by a clever trap is only surpassed by the "haha sucker" when you're watching a replay of someone dying to your own traps.
one level i played the person had put the disappearing block right in front of an easy to shoot trap, so when you went to get your dart, you could fall through to a lava block.
pretty sneaky, sis
God I ain't even played Elden Ring and I want to cosplay this so badly
3DS Friend Code: 0216-0898-6512
Switch Friend Code: SW-7437-1538-7786
same but life
what is your stance on lady maria
But yeah, it's a melee and magic Tarkov, with very slow melee swing speeds. One of the main advantages is that it has nearly instant map resets (I guess as long as its working).
It looks like a Wizardry BR. Very square corridors and maps.
did it, but it took way too long.
dodging seemed random. Sometimes it would feel like I was way too early, but I'd be fine; and others I'm clearly safe physically, but I'd get hit.
follow-up attacks were just strange. Sometimes I'd hit him once, and then he'd guard; sometimes that guard would be a deflection; sometimes I'd nick him twice; and sometimes he'd just step back and immediately attack again. Occasionally he'd just decide to let me hit him while he calmly puts his sword back in the scabbard, and that always felt wrong.
the thought that keeps coming to mind is that most of these fights feel like a conversation. Attacks, responses, dodges, deflections, guards. In that model, he feels like he can interrupt himself. He's also a boring conversationalist, with just the one thing to say. On the rare occasions he'd say the other thing, it was always a surprise. Not delightful in the least, but surprising.
--
Emma says that she'll give me something if I know a particular technique. Is that found in one of the esoteric texts or is it something I'll gather in the world?
oh @Brolo...
Welcome to Zonugal's Felicity Corner.
But Felicity's freshmen roommate, Meghan Rotundi, is a party-goth who practices magic.
And, well, in this series magic is real.
As the series progresses, Meghan's spells seem to actually work (with the series never shining too intense a light on that particular fact).
Well, skip ahead to the series finale and the show lands the plane (it's a really great series finale), but, well...
So the series is over, they wrote & filmed their series finale but one of the new show's on the WB's slate just bombs, so the WB comes to J.J. Abrams & Matt Reeves (both are showrunners of Felicity, obviously) and asks them to just produce five bonus episodes. They just need episodes to fill the schedule while they get a new show ready.
So J.J. Abrams & Matt Reeves come up with the idea that a few months after the series finale Felicity Porter is unhappy with how her life has ended up, so she asks her friend Meghan to cast a time-travel spell to send her back to the beginning of their senior year (aka the 4th season).
And the rest of the arc is Felicity coming across as a crazy person as she tries to course-correct her senior year of college. She ends up destroying relationships and getting her best friend killed, because few characters can 100% ruin a situation like Felicity Porter.
The end of this arc, and thus the actual series finale, is Felicity seeking out the help of a New York based warlock (played by Kurt Fuller) to help her cast a ritual to nullify her time-travel spell, which ultimately creates a third reality.
FELICITY IS A PERFECT TV SHOW
That show was so god-damn fun to watch.
As the person quoting this article mentions, it’s even more disappointing because their reaction to any negativity at all was to act like they were the injured party, while most of the chat was actually being positive and they continued to stream well after this moment. Just super disappointing from some creators I enjoyed.
So frustrating
Oh wait there’s a way to check which graffiti you have, but that’s it
the gold standard
The guy is currently making fun of the comments they’re getting, put on a fedora in game and said “me thinks you are transphobic, milady”
They’re basically having a super neoliberal meltdown about it. They don’t specifically hate trans people, so streaming the game is fine. They can’t understand why people would be upset by this in any way.
I promise you now that if I ever get even somewhat notable that I will immediately abandon all of my principles if it means I can make a quick buck or even just get to hang out in the same lobby as some c-list celebrity
I mean that is the dream right? Get a moderate touch of success and sell out immediately for peanuts of exposure?
pleasepaypreacher.net
anyway this next segment is sponsored by Raytheon
...on this forum.
I'm not sure how you can make a quick buck off of having the correct opinion on Star Citizen, but I bet you can make some money off of being the septic tank filter that Steam's "new releases" list flows through. Put your list of recommendations up on the broader Internet, put it behind a paywall, obvious - but then you monetize it from the other end, too, since plenty of game devs would eagerly pay you to get some exbrosure.
Even worse it apparently started when she dated a YouTuber guy who had these views. Which was a massive red flag and concern. It was the most horrific and sad right turn I’d ever seen and shook me hard enough that I’ve kind of always been prepared for YouTubers and such to disappoint me
I always just think of those as a lonesome rhodes moment (a reference to an old andy griffith movie). This person went where she thinks the money is, she's not a true believer shes a mercenary.
pleasepaypreacher.net