2024 VIDEO GAMES CATCH ALL THREAD

[dragonzombie]

The SNES had a Street Fighter Alpha 2 port, published by Nintendo

https://youtu.be/1EtbIgu5qAs?si=6SDZhgQ8kBH840nG

Classic style Chun Li and Shin Akuma are the only secret playable characters in the port. The playable Shin Akuma secret was found out 20 years later.

Street Fighter Alpha was ported to the GBC, which was released years later and developed by the defunct Crawfish Interactive. The same developer later made Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper for the GBA, Yun, Maki and Eagle from Capcom VS SNK 2 were added to the roster.

.

[Cliff Hanger]

Notably, the SNES Alpha 2 calls Sodom "Katana" just like the SNES ports of Final Fight.

[Death From Above]

Loved Alpha 2 on the SNES even if the AIs were miles away from being great. Gen is honestly one of my favourite fighting game characters to play.

[JLSigman]

Hades 2 is in Early Access, and getting rave reviews

[RIPPA]

Arkane Austin was the studio behind Redfall so that explains that

Tango Gameworks did Hi-Fi Rush and Evil Within

Microsoft will cease all future development on Redfall but insists the servers will remain online. They will also offer a "make good" to the folks who bought DLC that they never received

[Death From Above]

Redfall is one of the most puzzling disasters in the history of the industry. Like, nothing about the game is good. Nothing. I'm honestly not sure how Microsoft justifies even allowing it to release in the state it was in.

[dragonzombie]

Shame about Tango Gameworks.

[Robert S]

I have been playing Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes for a couple of hours and so far I am not really liking it that much. I am really considering to not continue further. One the one hand, the games feels... bland maybe? Like the basic framework of the game is there but it misses a lot of polishing. Also some design decisions (like having save points that are 30 minutes apart, autosaving that is done so little that they might as well have not had that feature, party member changing can (apparently unless you have a specific member in your party) only be done in inns, the whole menus and equipment management seems barebone etc.) seem too antiquated to justify them with JRPG nostalgia.

Before that, I was playing Ys 8 - my first Ys game and that was I game I really enjoyed. I like the setting, this Robinson Crusoe / Family Robinson / Lost inspired plot framework for the later heavy-JRPG story works quite well. The mechanic of instant-switching of characters takes some time to get used to (I don't know how often I accidentally hit square when spamming special moves and switched characters), but it's a necessary thing to have with the three different weaknesses you have to deal with.

[SirSmUgly]

Welp, Game Pass is an official failure. Not in the sense that it doesn't have millions of subscribers, but in the sense that it isn't profitable enough for the shareholders.

The point of Game Pass is that it needs content to keep up a userbase, so all these A- and AA-developed games are now viable again because they have a home in helping to maintain Game Pass subs and limit subscriber churn.

Game Pass subs have flatlined, so all those studios need to sell copies to be viable, and they didn't and don't do that. Tango's only success sales-wise is the first Evil Within game, right? 

I fear for Double Fine. Psychonauts 2 sold just about two million copies. That's their most successful game (again, from a shareholder point of view). I know Tim Schafer didn't want to do Psychonauts 3 immediately and wanted to explore other ideas, but, uh, maybe he should re-think his plans. 

Anyway, I have a lot of thoughts about Phil Spencer's approach to pushing Game Pass as the big money generator for Xbox Games or Microsoft Games or whatever it's called now. Most of them are bad thoughts, particularly that:

1.  Nintendo and Sony were never going to accept Game Pass on their consoles, and at least one of them doing so was necessary to this gambit working out, but
2.  If you're going to try anyway, you have to go to total pressure on Nintendo and Sony as much as possible to get them to accept it. On the one hand needing Game Pass subs to go up to nine figures for your plan to work out, but on the other hand cutting deals with Nintendo to put Rare games on NSO or sending Cuphead and Ori over for purchase there totally undercuts your plan. You need to wall off everything to consumers on those consoles to either get them to go in on GamePass on their PC/buy an Xbox to get Game Pass or to get them to hassle Nintendo (which obviously works considering how quickly they ported Mother 3/EarthBound Endings to the United States) to include Game Pass as an option. The same goes for Sony, but at least they only started porting stuff over to PS5 after Tim Stuart and Satya Nadella clearly stepped in and mandated it...due to Game Pass being a failure.
3. The same goes for PC. When you offer, say, Pentiment on Game Pass for PC, but also throw it up there on Steam so someone can just buy it outright and bypass Game Pass, then you've really undercut your supposed strategy.

Phil Spencer might be worse at running Xbox than Don Mattrick was. At least Mattrick had a financial success, if not an artistic one, with Kinect (though I do like Dance Central and Double Fine's Sesame Street game for it is adorable). He's clearly in over his head and a seeming example of the Peter Principle.

To my point: How does Microsoft release Redfall in its initial state? Well, Phil Spencer said that they internally graded it in the 90s. Yes, that's on a 100-point scale, not a 500- or 1000-point scale. The guy is completely incompetent. 

[Zimbra]

Wasn't Redfall one of those deals where the suits said "Destiny makes lots of money, so lets do that but not spend any money on development"?

[Technico Support]

On 5/5/2024 at 7:58 PM, Casey said:

This is a potentially dumb question, but:

Currently, I can’t connect my 360 to my WiFi because of, I guess, it‘s WiFi 6 or something. It worked just fine at my other place, but I moved, and Xfinity upgraded or something I guess, because there I had WiFi 5. Anyway, the only current workaround I see is setting up a dedicated router for my 360. I’m getting Ethernet soon, but I’m not sure if that would solve it either. If it does, then I’m good to go. But anyway, my question is..

if I play a 360 game offline, and get achievements, will they pop/show up when I log into my Series X? Both consoles use the same Xbox profile, I can view non-BC games’ trophy list on my Series X, so… yeah.

I really want to start Stranglehold, and finish X-Men Destiny, but I don’t want to do it if I’ll lose my progress/achievements.

I miss memory cards tbh. Constantly needing an internet connection sucks sometimes.

 

On 5/5/2024 at 9:18 PM, Raziel said:

So, there shouldn't be an issue, as all WiFi 6 routers are back compatible to previous standards.  The 360's DNS settings might be clogged, so you should probably reset the 360's network settings.  But, just connecting a cable from the router to the 360 will fix the network anyway.

To pop the trophies, you're going to need to take the 360 online at some point for it to sync.  

Yeah, what Raziel said.  I played XBox offline for a time and never got achievements. 

I'd say just go for Ethernet.  Back when I had an XBox One S, wifi speeds were horrible, even a few feet from the router.  Games could take hours to load.  But on Ethernet, with my fios connection, something like GTA 5 for modern systems can download in like 20 minutes.  I just Googled it and the theoretical wifi download speed for the One S was around 37MB/s while wired it was around 125.  I'm afraid to ask how bad wifi is on the 360.

EDIT: I double checked and the Xbox 360's wifi adapter is USB?  Yeah, go wired.  You're also losing speed because whatever slow wireless connection it has is then stepping down to USB speed.

Honestly, pretty much whenever you can go wired, go wired.  The exception to the rule is Roku TVs, whose wifi is typically faster than its shitty 100mb Ethernet connection.

Edited May 7 by Technico Support

[Death From Above]

11 hours ago, JLSigman said:

Hades 2 is in Early Access, and getting rave reviews

I'm not going to jump on this right away, but honestly anyone that says they have zero interest in Hades 2, what are you even doing with your life?

[odessasteps]

11 minutes ago, Death From Above said:

I'm not going to jump on this right away, but honestly anyone that says they have zero interest in Hades 2, what are you even doing with your life?

Raises Hand. 
 

i finally got rolling on Ghost of Tsushima. I doubt I finish the game before my month of PS Plus runs out. It hasn’t drawn me in the way I expected it would, sadly. 

[John E. Dynamite]

On 5/5/2024 at 7:58 PM, Casey said:

This is a potentially dumb question, but:

Currently, I can’t connect my 360 to my WiFi because of, I guess, it‘s WiFi 6 or something. It worked just fine at my other place, but I moved, and Xfinity upgraded or something I guess, because there I had WiFi 5. Anyway, the only current workaround I see is setting up a dedicated router for my 360. I’m getting Ethernet soon, but I’m not sure if that would solve it either. If it does, then I’m good to go. But anyway, my question is..

if I play a 360 game offline, and get achievements, will they pop/show up when I log into my Series X? Both consoles use the same Xbox profile, I can view non-BC games’ trophy list on my Series X, so… yeah.

I really want to start Stranglehold, and finish X-Men Destiny, but I don’t want to do it if I’ll lose my progress/achievements.

I miss memory cards tbh. Constantly needing an internet connection sucks sometimes.

When I need to get my 360 or PS3 online I use my phone as a WiFi hotspot. I think you have to have it set the band at 2.4 GHz because that's the issue I have with my home internet. But I'm no whiz kid.

[SirSmUgly]

• I beat Rise of the Ronin a week or so ago, with 100% completion, and they gave me a refreshed map with scaled-up enemies in response. I played a little, but nah, I think I'm good for now. The combat was excellent, and I dug the weird "based on true history" story with Commodore Perry (who was dead IRL at the time the story takes place) and Robert Fortune and everyone else randomly showing up and befriending you. It's worth playing, especially if, like me, you absolutely loved Ghost of Tsushima. It was a good Tsushima mimic that prevented me from instead 100% completing Tsushima for a third time.

 

• Princess Peach: Showtime! is a bad game and Good Feel is a bad developer, IMO. Of their games, I actually loved Yoshi's Crafted World, which is about a hundred times better than Woolly World, but it was a fluke and Nintendo should stop giving them projects. They won't because the Peach game sold over a million already, but man. The hitboxes in that Peach game are so weird. One day, they'll give Peach a starring role in a game that is actually good, I just know it. One day.

 

• On a side note, is her full name Peach Toadstool? Or is she Princess Peach of the Toadstool House? 

 

• I downloaded Dave the Diver on PS5, and I kind of enjoy it, but the game immediately starts piling stuff on you at the beginning of the game in a very gated, somewhat long tutorial, so I've been slow about going back to it. 

 

• I go off and on with playing Vampire Survivors, but the free DLC got me back to trying to finish each level with every character. The Operation Guns DLC is out tomorrow, which I am absolutely purchasing. I'm thrilled that it has release date parity on Switch this time around, too.

 

• 2024 hasn't been bad for games, and I'm looking forward to the TTYD remake next month, but I sure hope Hades 2 gets out of early access and onto my Switch or PS5 by the end of this year. 

 

• I think the Nintendo Direct and PS Showcase will give me at least one full-priced game apiece that I decide to purchase at launch later this year. 

 

• I unlocked a couple of WWF WrestleMania 2000 characters that I hadn't unlocked on this cart that I've had for years, but I really need to go back to Perfect Dark soon and finally beat it. I've beaten GoldenEye across all levels a billion times as a teen, but I don't think I've ever beaten Perfect Dark. I really have to reconfigure my brain to play this thing with a single analog stick. Microsoft needs to hurry up and port Rare Replay everywhere so I can maybe just play it that way. 

 

• There is just not enough time for writing and reading and work and travel and video games. 

 

[Contentious C]

I had a fun time last weekend realizing my PS5 controller had developed stick drift.

I had a slightly more stressful but also slightly more fun time just now learning how to fix it.

[The Old-Fashioned Gamer]

On 5/7/2024 at 6:08 PM, Technico Support said:

EDIT: I double checked and the Xbox 360's wifi adapter is USB?  Yeah, go wired.  Y

First Xbox 360 model required you to buy a separate WiFi adapter that plugged into a usb port. Later modes (Slim and E) had modem built in.

i was in the same position a couple years ago, but instead of going wired, i went the other way, A couple years ago, I was having problems with my 360 gaming. I went through a couple 360 consoles very quickly, a new modem kept me from connecting the 360 to the wireless network, Xbox 360 network went through a couple lengthy outages and I couldn’t play digital games offline because I couldn’t sign in to XBL and I had neglected to do use the license transfer option.  At that point, I owned around 600 Xbox games, most of them digital.  For those that don’t know, you can’t just copy X360 & PS3 games to a usb drive and move them to a new console. You basically have to redownload every digital game and start over if you replace the console.

i thought about going wired to speed up downloads, but instead decided digital libraries on a 15 year-old console that had been retired years earlier was just too much trouble and went physical.  Started buying up x360 games.  Wasn’t cheap or easy. I had gone digital fairly early, so most of my physical 360 games were games that had never been released digitally.  But it was fun.  I’m a collector.  I mostly target new or cib/mint copies of games and I go after limited/collectible editions whenever possible.  Turns out, I like collecting for the 360.

Currently, I have about 700 games on my 360 (mostly on a couple usb drives).  I have all my XBLA games installed since they are digital exclusives.  I also have digital editions of xBLA titles like Minecraft & Life is Strange.  They got physical releases, but retail editions of XBLA games can’t be installed to the HDD and there are usually some small benefits to playing games from HDD.  But by and large, if a game is available in a physical edition and the physical edition can be installed to HDD, it’s the retail edition that is installed and waiting to be played.  Kind of a shame.  I spent a lot of money on digital games over the years. But it turns out I enjoy x360 collecting an awful lot.

i do hedge my bets. Last year, I refurbished a 360 and made a bunch of mods (added green led lights, turned up the fan to better regulate temperature, replaced the thermal paste with a better grade, etc.). Decided to mod the console to play emulated games, if necessary. Haven’t had mich interest in going that route so far, aside from NCAA Football Revamped and a couple XBLA titles that got delisted before I got to them.  But it’s an option if I ever lose access to my purchased XBLA titles or lose my physical collection in a move or something. Console is also now region-free, which is great for playing some Xbox 360 games that are region-locked (mostly some of the Cave shooters only released in Japan).  Mostly I did it for the region-free.  Really dig the Cave shooters. There are also some import limited editions I really like (Bayonetta: Climax Edition) and a couple import complete editions with dlc on the disc instead of the code the US edition included.

i don’t normally put this much effort into gaming, but I’m a much bigger fan of the 360 (& PS3 & Wii, for that matter) than anything that’s come after.

 

 

[Death From Above]

So yeah, of course Sony backed down on the Helldivers 2 PSN account requirement. For those that don't understand what the fuss was about, PS accounts are not available in 170+ countries, so in order to even sign up from a lot of places you have to fudge your address. Apparently Sony just doesn't care on console, but going through Steam on PC this provides a bunch of legal issues. Not the least of which being that Steam had to temporarily de-list the game in all of those countries, not to mention if you lived there and owned the game it was straight up bricked. Helldivers 2 is easily Sony's biggest cash cow on PC so the fact any executive thought this was a good idea is just so immensely boneheaded. It's way too common a story these days, greedy executives (and I think it's a scary sign in this case greed refers to data collection over profit) totally out of touch with the reality of their products.

Ghost of Tsushima's PC port will require an account for the multiplayer by the way. Yay. Single player it won't matter at least which is good.

[RIPPA]

So on today's Warner Brothers Discovery earnings call - everybody's favorite, David Zaslav, blamed the quarter's losses on Suicide Squad tanking

I fear for Rocksteady

[Death From Above]

 A great lambasting of the current Microsoft stupidity.

https://youtu.be/vAb21GaTEGw?si=8YrG4VwMxXyF5fBt

[Zimbra]

I didn't realize that Tunic was baby's first Dark Souls.  I'm enjoying it but was hoping for something a little more on the Zelda spectrum.

[JLSigman]

On 5/6/2024 at 7:55 AM, JLSigman said:

Time for Cat Quest II!

Also took about 9ish hours to beat. Didn't like it quite as much as the first one (a little too self aware at times), but still very cute fun.

[dragonzombie]

Think I will turn on Tekken Tag and Tekken 4. 

I forgot they kinda ported Tekken 3 and Tekken Tag  to GBA as one game. 

[dragonzombie]

JPN Mortal Kombat 2 for PS1 with scaling mode on

https://youtu.be/kCyQpRUQfA8?si=ZkHZvM4TzOnRjAfy

 

In unrelated news, Automated N64 Recompilation

https://youtu.be/ywWwUuWRgsM?si=_wnZNrFSx5cbv_bW

[Coletti]

On 5/10/2024 at 10:05 AM, Zimbra said:

I didn't realize that Tunic was baby's first Dark Souls.  I'm enjoying it but was hoping for something a little more on the Zelda spectrum.

I'm so happy it was offered on PS+ this month because I'm absolutely loving it