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Brolo
BroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered User regular
BroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered User regular
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Posts
39 million unit drop in game sales, new price point looking rul smart.
Higher revenues to me = more cash being locked up/captured in forever games like Fortnite and Apex. Meanwhile, expensive new titles might be skipped entirely, which is a pretty bad state of affairs for a lot of reasons, imo.
Yeah, if they are looking at FY22, then the consoles commanding those prices were hard to get for quite a while. I'd also argue the increasing quality and quantity of indie games, combined with the length (and monetization) of AAA games, could mean fewer AAA purchases.
Outside of gaming, I'd also argue that since the pandemic kept everyone inside, the freedom to travel and hangout outside of the home, means less folks buying and playing games.
Okay, here's May.
The new enemies feel quite blah. But the environment I really like.
Throwing explosive spikes is still my solve this problem move though.
Spoilers re enemies and the new weapons.
Bileguts I feel are just too big of hit point sponges with a really annoying jump attack and they just take too long to kill.
Satans..... hints.....
Added an Aladabra Tortoise as the only habitat animal, but couldn't find an affordable female to go with the male so far, but eventually I'll find one. Added two exhibits to get that challenge out of the way as well.
Had two successful births one new zebra and a new African Buffalo and the crowds fucking love newborns they have like 600 more appeal than their parents. Once they grow up I'm aiming to release them for some conservation points, but I'm not sure if either species will get me much since their not threatened or anything.
Been struggling with the realization that I'm not going to be able to afford the really cool animals I want yet and it's going to take some time letting the zoo make money and releasing offspring to get the conservation points I need for the big cats and giraffes, elephants, and rhinos.
I think my best bet is going back to sandbox mode and practicing building a monkey exhibit and climbing and probably a monkey island because that's what my closest zoo looks like and it's cool.
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Ah see that's reductive, yeah sales for Zold will likely be great because it's a "must have" franchise but that doesn't take into account other factors such as (for example) how many times the new price point prompts people to be more choosy in getting the one more expensive "must have" title they really want, and how much that comes at the detriment of game purchases that may now fall by the wayside in favor of the new Zelda. (Particularly instances where it results in multiple games from one publisher cannibalizing each other's sales as people become more choosy.)
It will be interesting to see the longer term results of this, it could very likely be a case of people will tolerate microtransactions and DLC but the $70 price point is where they walk away or stop purchasing as much, even if the behavior is somewhat dissonant (like how notoriously hard it is to get people to pay up front for mobile games).
But then again, maybe not. But we'll be finding out soon enough.
- the bull is still a pain; took three tries and I still don't understand that fight
- Lady Butterfly took two tries.
- I knockd Juzou down to one hit and then spoke to Nogami Gensai, who absolutely refused to attack
- handily defeated Ako this time; took one node and 3 confetti and I almost died, but I did it.
I'm interested in pursuing this purification ending I've heard about.
To that end,
prologue: Wolf regains his will to live ... and loses an arm (night)
act 1: Wolf heads up to the castle, and defeats Genichiro (late morning)
act 2: Wolf undertakes a quest. and chooses to defeat Owl (early afternoon)
act 3 (optional): Wolf reaches the Fountainhead Palace. and fights the Divine Dragon (evening)
epilogue: Wolf again faces Genichiro in the Silvergrass Fields (night)
- is this a good model? i.e., are there additional time-blocks I didn't notice?
- if I go through as much of the game as is accessible during each act, will I be broadly ok?
- are there any specific stumbling blocks? obviously act 3 only exists if I side with Kuro; are there other dialogue choices to make or is it more just listening, collecting items, and talking to people as much as possible during each act?
Or just fail to deliver on what I'm looking for. It's why I like gamepass at least with microsoft and their vendor titles, if the game sucks I'm just out the download and my monthly fee, but the fee is part of my gold anyway.
pleasepaypreacher.net
this is a PS trailer, but Fantavision 202X, a remake/remaster of the original PS2 launch title is out now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2353280/FANTAVISION_202X/
It supports VR as well
No.
Swolent.
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It seems like it’s all related to the fact that these AAA games are just too expensive and untenable to make. It feels like every game arrives with the entire team barely making it to the finish line. Either every game needs another month or more to cook or games need to be smaller
@Tamin
2. basically, yeah. As long as you take care of everything else before going to Fountainhead Palace you'll be good. I think you can even back out of Fountainhead and do stuff as long as you don't beat the divine dragon but i'd say play it safe and just don't go to the palace til everything is done.
3. There's an item at the monk temple that's a little easier to get it if you go there before fighting genichiro, but you can still get it afterwards. the only "lockout" dialogue choice is the one you mentioned, but to do everything you'll need to talk to and eavesdrop on everyone a fair bit. Even if their dialogue is exhausted, rest at a shrine and check again, because sometimes they'll have new dialogue at that point.
Also: you might also want to look up the requirements for the "dragon's return" ending. it's not mutually exclusive with the purification ending, so you can do both quests in one run. Both quests give you a special key item, and after you beat Isshin you decide which one you want to use, which determines which ending you get. So if you have both, you can trigger one ending and then reload and trigger the other ending. all the endings are neat (and Purification has a really fun boss fight involved that you don't see otherwise) but Dragon's Return is the one that most feels like a "true" ending; if they ever make a sekiro 2 god willing, my guess will be it'll pick up up from the dragon's return.
if you want to do both endings without using a guide, then just make sure you're exploring REALLY thoroughly and talking to everybody as much as you can
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I don't know if my inquiry truly is all that reductive.
Are you proposing that games within "must have" franchises are allowed to jump up to that next price-tier and other games should be content to reside at the $60 price tier?
Cause I don't know if the studios publishing triple-A titles would willingly financially-label their own titles as "silver medals."
Every time Ridin' Solo by Jason Derulo plays
And I mean every time
I mentally substitute in the Han Solo version. It's such a joy.
Shocker: I can buy less games when they're $100 with taxes!
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I never get sick of the transition of every single other character looking weird and then Lando being just like "Yes this is exactly where this character fits"
It read to me like a "Zelda will be fine, therefore it's not a problem" type of post, and apologies if that's not what was intended. What I'm saying is there's a possibility jumping AAA up a price tier is prompting people to scrutinize their purchases more, and how they prioritize could come at the expense of other "silver medal" properties, as you put it. Less of a concern if some indie games are getting trampled or they beat out a competing AAA title, moreso if it's eating into their own properties. Though I probably wouldn't bank on that actually being enough of a dent to cause publishers to back off of $70 at this point.
It's a weird game! And not just because of the theme of transforming, magical foodstuffs. Based on the theme, the cuteness of the food critters (they say their names, like Pokemon!), and the fact that all the player characters are basically Muppets, you'd think that they're aiming to appeal to kids. But then the story is like... really really NOT for kids at all. The narrative is almost Wes Anderson-esque in the collection of dysfunctional characters who start out the story just HATING each other, by and large. The tone is mostly kept light and funny, but the topics are universally pitched at an adult level. The scientist character isn't just quirky mad scientist, lol, she's eyebrow-raisingly unethical and misanthropic. More Professor Hojo than Egon Spengler. The best part of the game is how the character writing and VA go much further than you think they're going to. Almost every character is loaded with interesting depth and manages at least a few excellent lines as you go through their questlines. The voice acting across the board I have to say is notably superior to MANY similar games in this vein that I've played. A lot of the characters are putting up some kind of front, so you get to hear the many versions of their persona as they talk to different characters. And that's actually one of my story complaints, the character interactions are very snappily written, very funny... and not nearly frequent enough. This is because the vast majority of the story throughline involves you encountering one or perhaps two characters out in one of the world areas. They ask you to do 3-4 Bugsnax activities (generally speaking, catch a certain snack and feed it to them), and then return home. When you find a certain amount of people, you'll trigger an event where all the characters actually react to each others' presence, but until that happens, you're basically just listening to a series of funny monologues in between bug hunting. I would have MUCH preferred something like Psychonauts 2, where the characters constantly interact in all kinds of configurations as the story progresses.
Regarding those tasks, the bug hunting is interesting, and certainly the part of the game that would work for kids. It's like a hybrid of Pokemon Snap and Ape Escape. Observe the snack doing its thing in the field, receive hints from your camera, then decide how best to catch it based on the tools you have, the surrounding area, and perhaps even with the assistance of other snacks wandering around. The areas are small enough to memorize right away and there's a decent amount of snacks (around 10-15) per area to give each one a good variety of possible tasks. Because the team that made this isn't a huge studio, there isn't a HUGE variety of snax in the game, though. I'd say there's about 4 varieties: ones that you can catch instantly (perhaps they'll hide from you), ones you can catch by momentarily stunning them (most fliers are this category), ones that are violent towards you that you have to defuse in some way, and bosses (which are also the violent type, but I'll give them that they're very different from every other kind). There's two modifiers that add an extra step to the catch (frozen and on fire), the DLC adds a giant modifier (which is again, just a quick extra step to the process), and that's pretty much all of them. I don't think it's a bad thing that there are only a few real styles of catch, as that would make the game easier to grasp for a young audience. However, I do mind that you start getting near identical variants basically instantly. In the forest, there's a big beetle + cheeseburger (a bunger). Then in the desert area, there's... a BBQ bunger. There's not even a difference to the catch, it literally just looks different. This happens in every area of the game, and it's super noticeable. I will give the team one big thumbs up, though. Since you can feed every kind of snack to every character (and specifically choose to affect any part of their body), they did clearly do a LOT of work to make the visual design work for every snack on every character on every body part. That was probably an insane effort, and it may be the direct cause of limiting how many unique snacks they ended up making.
One of the characters doesn't want to eat the snacks like everyone else, they want to ranch and raise them. So this opens a completionist part of the game where in addition to all the snacks you feed to people, you need to catch duplicates for the ranch. I got super into this, but realized towards the end of the game it was a big waste and I was kind of dumb for doing so. Like... out of 115 critters or so, you need like 25-30 in the ranch to go 1000/1000 achievements. I think there could have been ways to make this feel more rewarding. Like funny codex entries that only unlock when you capture a snack and add it to the ranch, for example. As is, it feels like they got complaints about the game's length and added depth in a way that feels like a waste of your time once you reflect back on it (beat every boss twice, just as an example of wasting your time).
Since the game launched for about a year on Playstation before going to Xbox, I got the benefit of post launch content included from the start. This entails an almost never-ending list of optional quests, unlockable customization for the snacks you give to the ranch, and a brief DLC story outing, basically a new area of comparable length to the main story levels bolted on towards the end. The optional quests are the depth you might feel was missing from the main story quest, but the only thing they "do" is unlock furniture for your in-game house. I spent WAY too much time on these before realizing they were not necessary and not of the same quality as the main questline. Like... a text line asks you to catch 4 specific snacks, you do it, then another text line is like "Good job doing that!" Not worth it unless you just LOVE playing the game, frankly. The ranch bugsnax customization is sort of cute, but I do not care about it at all. The story DLC was very good and feels like it fits into the story very well, however the unique snacks from that excursion are... not very exciting. Several of them are brand new and not similar to existing snacks, but only one of them really caught my attention (a weird, creepy pasta (lol) spider that tries to snag other snacks and some of your items from a perch high in a tree). I will say playing the DLC area smooths out some of the ending's story beats a bit a more.
Finally, some in-depth story discussion, including the ending.
Regarding the "twist" that's sort of not a twist because even the game's theme song heavily points at it... surprise, it's not just whimsical silly times here, it's also kind of a horror story. The bug snacks that seem to exist to be eaten and completely transform people's bodies? Yeah, they're parasites and if you keep eating them, you dissolve INTO a bug snack and lose your autonomy completely. This is another area where the ending falls a bit flat to me. The twist is SO horrible and SO frightening, yet they SUPER lowball it. You're encouraged for an achievement to completely transform everyone's body (the very thing that should basically kill them) and this doesn't change the story at all. You can change your entire body with parasites and be fine, even though the character in the story with the most knowledge on the subject says that the Bugsnax ALWAYS WIN in this exact way. Literally the first thing that happens in the story is that you meet someone who is going to starve to DEATH because they can't manage to catch Bugsnax to eat. The second character you meet is desperately trying to figure out an alternate food source, again because of the threat of starvation. When you finally meet the group's missing Doctor, towards the very end of the game, they react with worry that your player character is allergic to Bugsnax, since that puts you in danger of starving to death yourself. Everything about the consequences from the quests leading up to this point suggests VERY STRONGLY that your group leader has been irrevocably changed by the snax, it is too late for her, and the entire group is on the brink of following her fate. Because you need to eat to live, and everything to eat in the local area IS a Bugsnack, and eating them will inevitably dissolve your body into a pile of cartoon meat and cheese... yeah, there's a huge problem here, with clear stakes. But just like the character plotline, this falls into disarray, right at the very end. The leader's girlfriend refuses to accept her sacrifice and decides to team up with her to help save everyone else. They both merge into a sort of cute visually, but horrifying and disgusting on deeper reflection-giant snack beast and the rest of the group flees in an action sequence that repurposes all the catching tools as weapons to kill the Bugsnax (this is why the "cute" customization system is weird and stupid, to me). Then, post escape, everyone has their "I have solved the problems in my life, instantly" moment, and the two left behind are... fine. They're fine! They live happily ever after, their bodies don't disintegrate into bug snacks (they turn back to normal, completely), and they live on a diet of sauce (something specifically discussed as being untenable earlier in the story!) presumably for the rest of their lives. Despite the clear statement that the Bug snacks always win, despite the volcano exploding (!!), despite the bug snacks being a terrifying, hostile force that JUST tried to murder the entire group, despite the food situation meaning they should definitely die of malnutrition... nah they're fine. Happily ever after, love wins.
So my thought is... there was some kind of large disagreement or problem with the direction the game was going to go. On one hand, you have a story about complicated people earning their happily ever afters by having an adventure with the cursed spawn of Pokemon and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. And in that story, you absolutely CANNOT bury your gays. People would hate that, and there's a lot of justification for feeling that way. And on the other hand, you have a classic horror story about this literally forbidden fruit island. You go there, you eat the food, you become the food, then more people come there and so on. They've tried to square the circle, and I feel like they came up with a rather weird product that won't totally please ANYBODY (well... maybe it would completely please a small child who skips all the dialogue and catches 10 hot dog snacks that they give little cowboy hats to). The horror, lore, and logic of the situation cry out for blood, while the fact that they made a game starring Muppet knock offs that catch cute talking burgers suggests they should probably not go too too dark.
tl;dr, Bugsnax is cute, mechanically a bit too simple, and has a worthwhile, interesting story that does not fully pay off because of several compromises made by the ending.
Nope, never mind, this should be amazing.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Cooking Companions, FAITH (kind of), and now Amanda the Adventurer have all just been complete flops for me because of this.
The conceit of Amanda the Adventurer is that you're in an attic watching old tapes of an extremely bad 90s CGI kids show akin to Dora the Explorer, but the tapes are also telling you how to Escape Room stuff in the attic to find more tapes and uncover more of what's going on. Except every ending is almost completely random and meant to fuel speculation and there's zero attempt to really explain anything, just piling more and more stuff on to theorize about, potentially for the DLC that actually explains everything (that's what Cooking Companions did). It's not like these are Daniel Mullins games where there is a cohesive plot with some hidden extra content that takes a ton of effort to piece together, or like some heavily symbolic/metaphorical thing like Yume Nikki, it's very clearly a bunch of concrete mystery boxes strung together to maximize speculation and fan engagement at the expense of being impossible to understand outside of the streamer/fandom ecosystem.
Interesting thing about the ending, if you didn't look it up already
I didn't really read it as simplistic as "I've solved all of my problems", as much as it is realizing and admitting to their problems and resolving to make a change, thanks to everything they've been through on the island. Sure it's a little bit storybook, but I like it a bit better than say Romero-esque commentary on society where every terrible person simply doubles down on the terrible and then all die and the only people that survive are the couple of protagonists that were all generically good to begin with.
I hope that reads as getting paid as quickly as possible
This is going to be Waiting for Godot of video game adaptations.
Looking forward to the mission where you have to protect Hitler from assassins.
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