one-armed dwarf

The thing is, the bit in italics here is the game, and the bit in bold is you asking why you can't skip the video game. Again, not trying to be a dick, but just to make the point a bit more clear. The game is about doing these steps and planning. It's about improvising, adapting, gathering and preparing. The other thing is, these games are about discovery and as much as I like bragging about my discoveries I feel like a dick spoiling them so often. But honestly the first thing I'd say is it doesn't make a lot of sense that you are just running around everywhere. My memory of the early part of BOTW was building up stamina overtime to climb cliffs and jump off them. Not just running around and running out of gas all the time. Starting off, just climb to a viewpoint and look for shrines is all I'd say. Overtime you just build an accumulation of knowledge as to how to move Link around more effectively, while also getting stronger. To bring it back to the thread topic, TOTK only builds upon that even more. Its a deeper game, but fundamentally the same style

You mentioned the thing about running out of stamina all the time before but that just was never my experience with the game I guess. If you're on a lot of flatground, you should wrangle a horse. Or start a bushfire and use an updraft to get some air. Or make a boat if near water. Or just chill and take it slow anyway. Like, the puzzle problem there is "it's taking me ages to get somewhere on foot, how do I solve this?". There's lots of answers provided in the game's world. It can't be stressed enough that these games are about adapting to the world and making yourself its master over time. Italics emphasis there is not to be snide or arrogant, but to stress that this is kind of the ethos of the whole game design, and a huge part of its appeal Though tbh the menus in these games aren't good, I will grant that at least.

The solution to slippery climbing IMO isn't elixirs anyway, it's shield surfing. Going up is harder but going downhill with momentum becomes easier.

Yeah To be honest, you kind of have to be patient and curious with the game's systems and treat stuff like this as an interesting problem to solve or work around/work with. Rather than a purely limiting obstacle. It's hard to see a way that you can enjoy these Zeldas without approaching it like this. IMO

So is Homelander's fatality going to be Laser eyes until the head is just fried brains or Hand in chest and squeeze heart to death (I cant play these games now, they're so gross lol)

It's not a 2023 game, but I think death stranding 2 is maybe becoming the most overlooked Sony exclusive right now Playing TOTK has reminded me that DS2 is the closest thing that Sony has to that game, in terms of open ended traversal strategies being a 'genre'. DS1 was pretty good but plateaued very early, a sequel could iterate on that and make something much richer.

When it rains, make lemonade

There's finite systems available to play on when cloud gaming. Geforce Now works this same way with your steam account, I loaded up my witcher 3 save on a remote 3080 machine the other day. That's the cool side of cloud gaming I think, when it integrates with what you already have.

So even tho I'm all about the pro hud life, I only recently learned that the standard hud in BOTW actually has a weather forecast on the bottom of the screen. So you can tell when it's going to rain. Basically the whole thing with BOTW is you do a bit of prep when going to do things, stamina/speed potions, fireguard, stuff like that. The way the wind blows affects the speed of your glider and stuff. So if it's going to rain you need to account for this too and plan differently, tho I wish there was a way of doing that with pro hud. TOTK is still a game very much about prep and thinking how to use your resources and knowing your environment, tho there's a new mechanic for dealing with slippery surfaces as well. Climbing is not as big a focus considering the new ways you have to get around, tho it's something you need to do at times and it's good to have a few speed/stamina elixirs for that. Basically, get cooking. In both BOTW and TOTK

I dont really get the spidey hype. The first one was a decent game with a good story, but still sort of felt like a ubisoft game with good movement mechanics. Then again I feel like that with spidey in general, that last film was boring but people were asking why it wasn't getting nominated for oscars and shit. I just feel on a different planet to that kind of hype, the square Enix guardians game was better than both of them

What's good about TOTK is that handholding actually funnels through everything in the game. If you look around, you will sometimes find a bunch of vehicle parts next to a goblin camp (for instance). Or other vehicles to solve other problems. Sometimes enemies will have fusions that you didn't think of yourself, like a shield that knocks you on your arse if you try to hit it (wont spoil how to make this). Everything in these, and the shrines, are designed to teach the player what is possible and give them the knowledge needed to build off of themselves. I'm going to (slightly) push you in a certain direction though, follow the main path a bit. Stop exploring, you need to do a few main quests before you get a little something which makes things clearer (you'll know what it is, it's the thing you don't have yet). But in general near every issue people had with BOTW being directionless is largely solved in TOTK, IMO, but without entirely sacrificing the freedom to roam around. It's just less about finding views than it is about finding resources and learning new traversal/fusing tricks (which lets you get around even more) It might have the same enemies but there's lots of new ways of fighting and interacting with them. Personally I've been using a lot of MGS in my playthrough, and throwing smoke bombs that follow the direction of the wind and doing lots of sneakstrike. But you've got to kinda take your time with the game, look at the shit you have in your bag and think if there's a combination of effects that can be leveraged. These games still expect a lot of scavenging and tinkering with things, sometimes some random seeds or chu chu jelly can be a ton more effective than straight up fighting, especially early on edit there you go, both me and mmmark are here to tell you that you are playing video games wrong 🤣

Shattered Memories is sort of the SH remake, though not really. SH2 is sort of the well known one anyway, it's like the canonical game out of that series. I would like to see gameplay of SH2 just to confirm if it's going to be the same game. Cause if it is then I don't actually think modern audiences will enjoy it (but I'll respect the hell out of it) FFVII won't be at this I think, XVI is out too soon.

Does it have one of those old sound cards that let you play System Shock 2 with the EAX audio? eg, the shit that doesn't work post Vista

Maybe we will see Snake Eater

I beat one of those yesterday as well, the same one I presume. This is a very subjective nit pick, but I wish it was easier to get around without fast travel. I liked how progressing through BOTW felt contiguous and you could do it without FT, but in this you need to go up to the sky islands often enough to get vehicle bits. Also my balloons break before I can get out of the depths, there seems to be a timer or distance mechanic for how long that they last. The game generally seems designed around the idea you will FT quite a bit, due to the resources and huge heights of everything. But it always just feels a bit lame to me to use FT in a game as well crafted as this. I did at one point last night spend ages building a sort of jet that would take me from sky island to a big flying tower in the distance. Finally got the altitude and speed correct, jumped out and ditched the jet for youtube views, glided over and drank a bunch of potions to increase stamina and speed to climb up it. Ascended a bit. Finally at the top I I love that though, I'm not complaining. It's all about the journey in these games.

I don't want to derail the thread tbh, there's a way to argue one way or the other for TF2. I can see that. But IMO XIV is just a spectacularly bad example, maybe the worst. Their house was on fire and they took a big chance on it cause they had to. It really was that big a deal Like, they made two games. They didn't just fix the bad one, they flung a metaphorical and literal meteor at it to start again (The overall point of which being, if we were talking the other day in the gamepass thread about taking a bit of perspective on the cost, scale and yes risk in bankrolling AAA projects to compete in these spaces then it's not a great one to point to)

Titanfall 2 would be the example I'd point to in favor of the argument why it's difficult to create an IP which can take on a brand juggernaut like CoD. We should be playing TF8 right now, but we aren't. Some of that is on EA for cannibalizing their own sales with BF5, but still a huge sales drop in a multi-plat sequel to an xbox exclusive paints a picture no risk averse publisher will be feeling confident about bank-rolling. Also Square nearly had a Spirits Within situation happen (again!) with FFXIV*. Realm Reborn was really more about rehabilitating Final Fantasy as a series than it was about challenging World of Warcraft, which still chugs along purely on inertia at this point, its aging framework being a bigger reason for a niche for XIV to fit into (as a number two, still to this day WoW is on top even if not by a whole lot) * edit looking this one up to confirm it, https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2010/12/16/square-enix-delays-deus-ex-cuts-revenue-forecast-by-90/ 90 percent drop in net profit forecasts, damn. Imagine if sony reported that, Blakey would be distraught.

To an extent, but its mostly the corps. People should go back and read that Scorcese op-ed.

That fox Disney stuff should definitely have been blocked But hey at least it means the xenomorph will be fighting Woody and Donald Duck in that Smash clone

EU says aye https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/eu-approves-microsofts-69-billion-acquisition-of-activision-blizzard-clearing-major-hurdle/ar-AA1bdfRU

There's lots of very cool constructions out there now. I'm afraid to look at them though because some of them come close to some ideas I have bouncing around lol. I wanted to beat a Lynel with an armored core, but someone already did that now

Looks like some of these recent showings have toned down the excessive particles. I can actually see what's going on now.

I've done so much fusing lol. Was up until 1am trying to kill this Lynel, got the fucker eventually 😠 (Lynel fight, no real spoilers) One fun thing I noticed about the puff mushrooms, is that the smokescreen they produce blows with the wind. So if you pay attention to the way the grass is blowing you can make pre-decisions if you are trying to approach things stealthily and use it as moving cover. Hard to rely on but another sign of just how well implemented the clockwork nature of this game is, you don't get this systemic cohesiveness in other open world games, at least not modern ones. Main difference between this and BOTW IMO @mfnickis it has a bit more structure, more direction early on. More importantly though I think it teaches the player how to play the game way better than BOTW. It's also not purely a kind of wanderlust game like BOTW is, moment to moment in each area it's always introducing new mechanical gimmicks

I like FFXIV's music A lot of what makes game music work tho is tied up in the way it's used in the game, and associative memory with that. I personally can't really listen to soundtracks of games I've not played. At the same time I don't know that any of XIV's stuff hits for people who've not played it. Devoid of context game music loses a lot This trailer for Shadowbringers has a very cool take on the FF3 overworld theme mixed in near the end. The whole expansion is FF3 themed (not FFVI, actual FF3) This was hype, again in context I don't play FFXIV much anymore though, like at all. The game is very stagnant and just does the same content over and over, and the story got kind of boring. Also trying to find people to do high difficulty raids is too stressful, and can get very awkward when it doesn't work out. So I might just have to stick to the soundtrack from now on, or look forward to XVI's OST which is also by Soken

It's not blowing me away like BOTW did, though I didn't expect that. But in many respects I think it's a lot better, sort of a GoW Ragnarok situation (except I like this a lot better than Ragnarok). They really force you to learn the different interactions between elements, weapons and environments. The shrines could sometimes be tedious in BOTW, but here each one is very interesting so far* and they all play a part in socialising environmental, traversal and battle mechanics/interactions. So far there's no flab, I think. I'm still not completely sure about the vehicle stuff maybe, but I'm not good enough at it yet *(Name of shrine I'm thinking about)