2023 VIDEO GAME CATCH ALL THREAD

[Craig H]

Yeah, saw that earlier. Feel awful for Jess formerly of Giant Bomb. She gets let go from there and then that, her partner Chip who works for Volition, is also out of a job. Sad times.

Pour one out for a studio that made some pretty cool shit, but stumbled a bit and definitely didn’t need to be shut down. That’s the perils of being owned by the Embracer Group.

[Death From Above]

I know the new Saint's Row wasn't exactly successful, but it still feels like "one bad game and the corporate overlords fire everyone", which is a pretty fucked way to try and work.

[Contentious C]

So I'm celebrating the release of Starfield by...

...playing a used copy of Elden Ring.

Yeah, yeah.  You know where to shove it.

It's pretty interesting so far.  I've picked up the 3 easiest map pieces, leveled up a lot of Vigor, bought or farmed every Smithing Stone I could get my hands on (because when the gatekeepers say, "Get good" they mean "good gear"), and used a LOT of stealth.  There are clearly a lot of elements their other games are/were missing that this one employs, and it's difficult to tell how much of that is conceding they wanted a bigger playerbase and how much is being 'open world'.  I think the biggest thing that differentiates this from Demon-flavored or Dark-flavored is the lack of 2-pixel-wide frame-perfect platforming tricks you have to do for basic traversal.  Those were always cheap, stupid, and annoying, but I'm suspecting some of the boss runs will be a mite irksome in that respect. 

The crafting system is...well, it's whatever, it's not the best one I've seen, it's not the worst, but it's a good enough addition.  

But really the stealth is the best improvement.  I didn't play Samurai-flavored, so I don't know if it's in that, but it adds a welcome bit of "fuck you" to the game.  Case in point: I bum-rushed Fort Haight just to see if I could push it over and get Kenny his stuff back.  Um.  No?  That didn't work?  I exhausted the Spirit Murder Puppies on Pumpkin Head and some of the rats, then I made it to the top and Ran Away from the big-ass knight holding the fort (literally in this case).  The asshole chased me about 15% of the way across the map before he de-aggro'd.  Also, it was broad daylight when I did all this.  So, I came back at night and stuck it to those fuckfaces: still summoned the Puppies to distract David Pumpkins, but then I backstabbed each and every one of the guards outside before blistering my way into the center of the fort and wrecking all the trash mobs.  Still had 2 good doggos left to pull attention away and fisted the ol' Godrick Knight with some Blood Grease.  In that sense, it's sort of like how I wish Ghost of Tsushima would play (since the AI in that game is piss-dumb).

Of course, the AI in this game is also dumb as dogshit, with some guys reaching for their swords and then forgetting you're right in front of them a split second later, but woe betide you if you cut a bear, because it will chase you like the world's cuddliest shark until you are dead.  And don't even get me started about that fucking ballista or the goddamn mages who potshot you like they're playing horseshoe with your wiener.  I still expect to end up deleting this and putting it back up on eBay once I reach whatever flippy-floppy-700-move-combo-boss-the-size-of-a-skyscraper is the one who finally steps on My Last Nerve, but I'm nowhere close to that yet.  Looking forward to cheesing Night Cavalry off the bridge tomorrow.

[J.T.]

On 8/31/2023 at 9:11 PM, Death From Above said:

I know the new Saint's Row wasn't exactly successful, but it still feels like "one bad game and the corporate overlords fire everyone", which is a pretty fucked way to try and work.

Volition was one of my favorite studios.   I'm bummed by this news.

I wasn't fond of the silly direction of the SR games after 2, but they had to do something to differentiate SR from GTA and SR3 won me over the more I played it.  I suppose doubling down on the cartoon violence and over-the-top antics for the latest installation was a bad idea..

Too bad we'll never get a remaster of SR2 aka the real masterpiece of the franchise.

[Death From Above]

3 was fine although it committed the cardinal sin of having a big fucking casino in the middle of town that you couldn't actually go into.

[tbarrie]

Random question: I enjoyed the Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton games, but never played the crossover. How would I go about obtaining the hardware and software to play that game in 2023?

[A.M.B.]

Mod a 2DS/3DS if you have one and it’s a total game changer, old Nintendo games are so ridiculously overpriced that IMO that’s the only option worth it. Very easy nowadays with a proper video walkthrough. Then you have every DS and 3DS game on its native console plus GBA, SNES, and lots of other stuff. DeSmuME on the CPU is great for DS but idk about 3DS. Sorry if this kind of talk is forbidden here.

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

hey i have some indie games to come in here and yell about because toddland 2023 came out so I feel the need to make sure people see these things and that they are not hidden

So one of these games is from 2018, and the other released 2023.

The 2018 game is called ZeroRanger, and it is the best shootemup of the last ten years. I can't embed links today so you can find that here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/809020/ZeroRanger/

It looks and sounds roughly like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSO3jV0Gz_0

It's great! Even if you don't like shootemups you should look at this thing, because it's the best solution to "how do you make these games matter when you can't insert coins?" that I have ever seen. On top of that, at the upper threshhold of learning how to play it, it manages to blend demanding requirements with satisfying rewards that's a bit like if Ghouls & Ghosts was also good to play. I cannot stress how much I recommend ZeroRanger, and if that's all that comes of me posting this stuff, it's worth doing it.

So the same team released a new game September 1st and it's a puzzle game with more dedicated storytelling moments in it, and if I'm being honest it's all I've done this evening. It's making a run at having the best style and narrative delivery in a game that I've seen definitely this year, and as far as pixel art goes maybe since Hyper Light Drifter? Which idk if y'all played that but Hyper Light Drifter is one of the games that's made me most satisfied I ever took this hobby up in the first place. So I'm not invoking it lightly.

Anyways, it's called Void Stranger, and it's right here! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2121980/Void_Stranger/

EDIT: Actually, here's a little of the old cross promotion! I've uploaded a bunch of new reviews on Backloggd, and the most effusive (and I think longest?) review I have on that website is for Hyper Light Drifter, so, here's that review, and if you click on the user name you can see all the new reviews I posted
https://www.backloggd.com/u/appstore/review/704015/

Edited September 7, 2023 by Lamp, broken circa 1988

[JLSigman]

So because I am desperately seeking serotonin for my brain, I've reinstalled Lord of the Rings: Online and found my account from 2011. Oh my gods it's still so, so gorgeous.

[Andrew POE!]

It's been close to a year since I posted but I figure I pop in and brag about something.

Just got my 300th Platinum trophy with God of War (2018). And @Contentious C's feelings about GOW (2018) were similar to mine but I was willing to overlook it (mostly). Mimir essentially being the boyfriend from Lollipop Chainsaw was also annoying.

Still, it's an open world game and I love those to death apparently.

[dragonzombie]

Squashed, 1991 unreleased prototype NES game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHnJZWY3k7w

http://www.lostlevels.org/200404/200404-squashed.shtml

https://tcrf.net/Ninja_Jajamaru:_Ginga_Daisakusen

Wasn't released in the west because of the copied SMB3 elements.

It's good anyways. 

[Contentious C]

So I decided to beat Prey last night.

I can't tell what about it is putting me off.  It could be that immersive sims aren't 100% my thing; I liked the many Bioshock-ish aspects of this game, but I think I played just a little too much of Deathloop and just enough of Dishonored to see how much of the core gameplay mechanics are copy-pasted among all 3 games.  The story is...well, I'd played it to what I thought was halfway through a few years ago (but is more like 25%) and wasn't sure what was going on, but this playthrough, I guessed the big twist in the ending at about the 2-hour mark of playtime.  So that didn't help.

I think the biggest thing is that the experience system didn't feel rewarding until nearly the end of the game, which had two specific bits where all your experience actually pays off: the boarding/invasion from Corporate and dealing with the sudden ramp-up in difficulty.  It took a few trips of getting the shit kicked out of me to realize I could go all Doom Slayer on the aliens but not on everything, and then getting to a point where I could nullify leadership the way I wanted finally took some of the many-paths puzzle solving and made it legitimately worthwhile.  But of course, by the time you get to that stage, you probably have a ton of health kits and you can literally blitz through whole sections just to rush the ending.

I don't know.  There are a bunch of puzzles I didn't solve, things I didn't break into, tricks I didn't figure out - I tend to be a resource hoarder in RPG-styled games by nature, so I didn't realize just what you could do with the recycler charges with respect to puzzle solving - so I may go back through with a different loadout and try to optimize.

But I didn't love this, and I'm not sure I'd call it the "best" of its genre, or massively underappreciated.  Companies like Arkane and Irrational have had 20+ years to iterate on the things that System Shock, Thief, Deus Ex, and Bioshock have added, so for me, sometimes I think, "Well, games like this damn well ought to be that good."

Edited September 10, 2023 by Contentious C

[SirSmUgly]

On 8/31/2023 at 6:11 PM, Death From Above said:

I know the new Saint's Row wasn't exactly successful, but it still feels like "one bad game and the corporate overlords fire everyone", which is a pretty fucked way to try and work.

It was really two bad games considering Agents of Mayhem, but I sense that whatever billion dollar deal fell through for Embracer Group pretty much sealed things for Volition unless SR was a huge hit. 

I'm pretty certain that the SR reboot did solid enough numbers, but yeah, video games are like movies now where everything needs to hit for a trillion dollar profit or it wasn't worth making. 

[Coletti]

Just finally finished Gris. 

Fuck.

[RIPPA]

To go along with Embracer closing Volition - per Reuters, they are looking to sell off Gearbox

[J.T.]

If Embracer fucks things up for future Borderlands games, I am going to be more than a little pissed off.

[Andrew POE!]

23 minutes ago, J.T. said:

If Embracer fucks things up for future Borderlands games, I am going to be more than a little pissed off.

I feel like 2K will buy Gearbox and we'll see a Borderlands 4 and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands 2 soon after that.

[RIPPA]

Bloomberg has confirmed and adds that Gearbox is also thinking about just spinning off and going independent

 

[Craig H]

Wow. Embracer went all in thinking they were going to get that sweet, sweet Saudi I have strong opinions about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which you should PM me about. But I wanted to express them here too because I can't help myself and now they're fucked since it didn't happen. 

Someone will probably write a book or a very long blog post about how badly they fucked up to not get an investment from the PIF.

[RIPPA]

@Dolfan in NYC is gonna be very pleased when he gets back from vacation

[blitzkrieg]

Been coming to terms with the fact that I've been more of a console buyer and video game magazine reader than an actually game player. So been working on working my way back through all the games that I never played. My most recent foray was Fear Effect for the PSX. Remembered magazines talking about it and seeing ads for it but pretty much had zero clue about the actual gameplay going into it in the present.

Think it's safe to say that if I had played it when it first came out I would have been sitting there with a print out from Gamefaqs and still wouldn't have probably got half way through it. The controls are very much in the vein of early survival horror 3D action games, so it took me a while to get the hang of things. Even taking that into consideration the game really seems to expect you to die till you figure out what you're suppose to do, then probably die some more while you figure out how to do what you're suppose to be well enough. That said the majority of the deaths didn't actually feel cheap and mostly just motivated me to figure out how to get past parts where I would get stuck. The puzzles had solutions that weren't hard to find if you took a moment to look around in the game. Though there were two where I just ended up brute forcing them and another two where I was in the ballpark but still had to look up solutions just because I couldn't figure out what the game wanted from me.

Honestly I was kinda surprised how much the game crawled up in my brain. First game in a while that I just constantly wanted to get back to.

[Chaos]

The Embracer rebranding kind of got tied into "mass acquisitions and expansions." It never sounded sustainable for a studio of that size or with that specific target base. You just hate it for developers and studios that thought they were getting a second chance/life by getting the support of a larger entity (even though that historically has not been the case).

[Casey]

The people behind the Unity Engine announced a new install fee for developers and the industry is pretty upset to say the least.

Cult of the Lamb is being delisted on January 1st, Among Us is going to move to a new engine, etc.

[Raziel]

Of course Unity does that when FM says they're moving to Unity for 25.  

Course, they're probably not going to like pissing off Paradox, Nintendo, and Microsoft...

[Death From Above]

I honestly can't remember seeing the game industry as a whole so united in saying a move was a terrible idea. I've seen a number of indie devs say that even if the Unity team backtracks totally, it doesn't matter because they've demonstrated a willingness to change the deal on games that have already been launched and that makes them an untenable business partner.