one-armed dwarf

It's interesting to me when a company announces they are putting their games on steam, but you still need to run their own launcher within steam. So in a sense, it's jumping through an additional hoop On the other hand it helps a lot with running that same game on a steam deck. Well, some of the time, some launcher integrations just don't work at all on deck. Battle.net works fine tho last I checked when I ran WoW on a linux laptop

Watched season 1 of The Bear, season 2 just came out the other day. You've probably heard of it as it's very hyped, but it's this gritty and very realist (at least, from my uninformed perspective) portrayal of working in a restaurant. This michelin-star level chef inherits his brother's struggling sandwich shop after his demise, along with tons of debt to mobsters and a sense of obligation to do something about it. Tries to fix the culture a bit, lots of shouting and friction but also some wholesomeness I think it's quite good and I found myself rewinding some scenes to listen to how characters explain how to make this weird type of plum sauce, and the representation of cooking is really interesting. The actual storylines and character/family/community dynamics can also be interesting but at times it's not fully coherent the why's and the whats of what's happening. The implications of its ending seemed a bit out of left field, and left me unsatisfied. I think it's good and I recommend it highly but I wouldn't be giving it the 5/5 reviews I've seen. But it's much better than Hannibal, which I got bored of cause it kinda was just meandering with no point from what I'd seen so far (8 eps of season 1).

Well I'm glad other people are saying what I was saying in the demo thread lol The fighting can be great but it's basically invisible at times with its visuals, and often in a game ruining kind of way. Especially when it's a night scene An enemy can wind an attack up right in front of you and you won't even see it

Rashid again I planned on learning him but ended up spending the last week and a bit learning Kim instead (gold 5 so far), cause the idea of replaying FFXVI on hard mode made me depressed. I'll mess around with this dude's kit for sure but 2 characters is enough for me for the time being

I mean if that does happen I will truly just not bother with new releases anymore. Too many games feel like shit on cloud, that's not really going to change (DMC, fighting games, FPS with mouse control. The latter of which is vomit town, that fucking camera delay 🤮)

Somewhere was a post saying that 80 percent of UK game sales were digital in a certain period, I dunno. But this seems indicative of that kinda shift https://www.eurogamer.net/tesco-to-drop-boxed-video-games Still don't expect PS6 to have a disc drive

Because games these days take the best part of a decade to make, not 2-3 years. At least the ones that are of the scale that get this kind of DLC (eg, not indie games) Not making Dark Arisen wouldn't change the fact that it took 10 years to announce its sequel Also DLC can be used to onboard new people onto projects, while said projects are still in pre-production

That kind of DLC is pretty bad I'll admit, and that's why it took me a decade to get around to playing Mass Effect's sequels. Some of it is pretty inessential, but some of it is not. But I think generally speaking, when the good is stuff like Dark Arisen or Old Hunters, it more than makes up for it

You guys realise though that near half of Final Fantasy games has received some sort of special edition with extra stuff If anything DLC has just made a better business model to add content like that onto a game. If DLC existed in 2006*, we would not have had to wait a decade for the Zodiac Age edition, which is far better than the original game. See also, MGS2 Substance/MGS3 Subsistence * I mean, technically it did, but not on PS2

That was another one I was thinking about, games where you spend more time looking at UI than the world Tho BOTW and TOTK do a good job of having both (UI aids, and a world that reveals POI itself). Prey 2017 also does the exact same thing as this.

Screens like this. Also while we're at it, that fucking Destiny cursor in the Harry Potter screenshot. FFXVI has this as well I wonder based on current events if in the future the annoying trend will be AI voice acting

That blacksmith needs some lexapro. I lolled when I saw the quest text 'Blacksmith Blues IV', it's a whole fucking saga with this guy!

The trolls are so gross, therefore this game must also be ick 🤮

Melty Blood is fun Fuck all people playing it however

Seems Disney themselves might agree (well not entirely, but agree that they overcooked it) https://variety.com/2023/film/news/marvel-flops-too-many-disney-tv-shows-bob-iger-1235669262/ --- Personally I wish Square had more success with their Marvel ventures, cause I think that's the only way I can really digest these kinds of stories and have them work for me. The films just lock into this similar kind of formula, but you can do lots more interesting things with their worlds with video games. GOTG films, drake nope. But GOTG the game.. 👍

Andy who are these Final Fantasy XVI fans who keep telling you these things about how great it is all the time. Is it Blakey? I'll put on my Sephiroth cosplay and sort him out for you, let him and them know which is the actual best one. I know people will read your post and think you're being ridiculous sticking with this game, but ill back you up on how the thing is the parts that are good are so good that they leave you wanting more. They are literally some of the best gameplay sections I've seen in a game in years. Which is what drives people through the other stuff It's a blue balls experience with this game.

Here's a Barbie trailer (not posting it in the trailer thread cause it's relevant to discussion) Zero interest in seeing this as well but if I had to make a choice for cinema visits, I would probably choose this over 'BRRRMM *mumble mumble* BROOOORRRRMMMM'

Nolan films are unwatchable without subtitles. Not watching another of his films on release after Dunkirk

I've been watching Hannibal. It's really gross, and I don't currently see where the 'best show ever' type acclaim comes from. But meh, it's quite good and an interesting spin on these characters. Tho not without its problems. I'm not a big fan of where they take Will Graham so far Maads is very disarming in his take on Lecter, a departure from the more theatrical Hopkins one people are more familiar with. He's very manipulative. He's sort of the protagonist after a bit, and the whole show seems framed to make you like him, and then feel a bit disgusted with yourself for feeling that way. I mean it has to be said, his dinner parties look quite splendid. Even tho it's all human kidneys and livers and stuff 😱 --- Succession and Last of Us sweeping the nominations for Emmys https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/2023-emmy-nominations-list-1235666521/ My money's on Culkin for best male lead and Bella for best female lead. Tho I've not seen a lot of the other stuff so just going with what I know Also Barry season 4 should not be getting comedy nominations lol

I mean, this is just sort of a meaningless cliché. Big business will do what it wants, doesn't mean that it should be unchallenged in doing so and such deals be unscrutinised.

I love the outrage here about watching 'IT' as a 9 year old, and zero reaction to the next film he mentions 🤣 Man, fuck that film 🤮

Do Sony have influence over corporate consolidation policy in Japan? Think that's what Blakey was mainly saying. I mean maybe they do, I don't really know. MS' rhetoric in this thing has been to indicate they would consider pulling out of the UK market entirely if such a drastic step had to be taken, which is unlikely, but is the kind of bullying that demonstrates why these kinds of regulatory processes are not a negative, even if it eventually turns out that the deal progresses anyway. (tho tbf, not actually sure what pulling out of UK really entails. Does it mean spinning ABK UK out as a separate entity or does it affect their gaming business in general, or more than that even)

She is one of the main characters of Game of Thrones Though hardly the best actor in it to be fair

Yeah I linked to this in the hot topic thread, wrt Metroid Prime's remaster. It's a reason why I take a slightly cynical view of the way IPs can be sat on for decades and be used to fill in a game catalogue with a HD remaster. Not to say that people shouldn't enjoy an upgrade of a game they love, some of these updates do majorly improve their oroginal, but would we value these as much if we could just as easily play the gamecube original, and do so legally? Because I really don't think that remasters are a good way of maintaining continuity of access, as these games will too become lost to time. Hell, Konami are selling us the Metal Gear Solid HD collection all over again. I went through this when trying to get into Armored Core, not a single one of those games are accessible through conventional methods. You've got to pony up for really expensive discs on ebay, which is itself a bit of a gamble (like Vaati's scratched Last Raven CD). So emulation really just has to be a thing here, because companies like Nintendo and Sony don't really give much of a fuck about it. In the case of Jim Ryan he doesn't even understand why people want to play old games https://www.vg247.com/why-would-anybody-play-this-says-sonys-jim-ryan-about-backwards-compatibility It can have a stifling effect also on just appreciation of these old games for their artistic expression. I look at copies of Panzer Dragoon Saga on ebay sometimes, which has now catapulted to RTX 4090 prices I guess due to the 'grading' bubble and inflation. Like imagine if something like Citizen Kane was so expensive and inaccessible. Is there a parallel universe where a game like PDZ reaches an audience a decade later and changes the course of gaming, much like Kane did for film? The industry and copyright law does not facilitate this

I mainly complain about image quality wrt there been too much information on the screen, which in turn gets fucked up by the terrible motion clarity of these systems (due to things like FSR, and inconsistent framerate), which to me really is only an issue that becomes apparent with modern games with all their particle effects (which I firmly believe is tied to selling people on HDR, but maybe it's just me). See also: any gameplay video of FFXVI Both versions of Prime are very clean and easy to look at imo, in fact I'd say games from that generation remain the easiest on the eyes. As far as looking at low res games go I was just playing Blood Omen 1 the other day. I'm not sure what resolution that runs in but it sure is low lol. Still not hard to parse what's going on, mostly That's a whole other Hot Topic question though Anyway I take your point, Nier Replicant was one of my GOTYs when it came out and while that has more enhancements than Prime (like a whole new character) it's also largely 95% the same thing, but made available once again