HandsomeDead

Wargames lied to us

@Maf I literally had my landlord here today saying I could maybe pay more rent despite being very visibly broke as fuck. So new games are out of the question.

He praises people who make him look cool, like Kojima, his friend, who he always pronounces his name wrong.

I think there's things getting mixed up a bit here. I get a bit lost in where I stand on this but overall I think when we talked about a change in IP law and the public domain is what I wish I saw more energy in. I don't think just letting people pirate Switch games is going to empower the people who actually do the work and make the games at Nintendo. We're not in a post capitalist society and pretending like we are with all this stuff isn't helpful, and at worst delusional. Maybe let's get the UBI first before we start with this stuff. I know at big companies there are useless ghouls taking most of the profits and even making bad decisions and you hate to see it, but there's a lot of putting the cart before the horse so I don't really see myself getting invested in these emulator folks getting away with everything.

She's trying her best

I dunno a lot of these mechanics are hidden. You won't rank down but I think you can lose 'boops' that you need to rank up if you leave them too long... or at least they did, I didn't experiment with that on Reload. Might be the sort of thing they removed but I didn't chance it.

@shinymcshine While in a social link scene you will be given options to respond to them with a dialogue choice. If you pick the right one you get three musical notes pop out of them. That's what moves the relationship. If you pick the wrong choice then you will have to get those musical notes by just hanging out with them enough so it sets off the next level of the social link. As you go through the game you will find more ways to get those notes (like weekend calls to hang out, it won't up your SL there and then, but it will make it certain next time). So no, don't just ignore them, it doesn't move on it's own.

I think I got off point a bit. My point is hardware being so similar makes exclusives much less interesting. It makes it so it is just all business and branding and I'm less interested in that. When hardware was unique it was much easier to sincerely create an identity in the games produced but in an absence of that it's all whatever. It probably is the reason I like Switch ports. It's like the last place this kind of ingenuity this happens. But even that isn't as interesting as things were. If hardware is so versatile now, and you don't need to focus in a certain way of making games I guess I just don't see the real need for exclusives anymore. I'm sure there's business and branding reasons for it but whatever This is why I'm like just make everything multiformat. The hardware is already built for that.

In a vacuum they've produced some amazing games going down the route they have but in a way TLoU has set them further down that route that has put them in the bad position they're in now. I think it's mostly the other reasons Sega are in the situation they're in, not just ceasing to be a hardware developer. Look at the early 2000s and the edgy place they were in. It was just the polar opposite to Sega at that time. I hope Sega finds something beyond Sonic and Lika a Dragon really soon. Well yeah, I know Nintendo devs have say in the hardware department and I'm sure it happens with the others but any game made with specific hardware in mind looks good. I dunno why that isn't happening on Xbox Series consoles, they just don't make those kind of games right now. I'm sure Hellblade will push it in the Sony way. No, I don't think layoffs are necessary. You split the teams to make more games if they're already hired. It's not a case of making the same amount of games but at a lower budget but have that budget they're willing to spend on more smaller games. Then you have a chance of one of them breaking out and covering the less successful ones.

Okay, this fucking topic got me thinking more. Oh dear. I got thinking about the legacy of exclusives and why they are. In the early days it was because the architecture of these systems were very different. Ports were unique, they'd even make totally different games with the same title (thinking of the two Aladdin games) or even what Konami did with Castlevania and Contra, making totally different games to those series because they wanted to really work to the hardware's strengths. Later if you had a port like the N64 version of Resident Evil 2 it's a fascinating example of some wild engineering because a game like that should not work on the N64. There were reasons why games were exclusive back then because the hardware was so different. But in more recent times it was less about that and just rather cynically just brand building and it's just insincere. Like it isn't because it would take some wild engineering feat why Final Fantasy Remake isn't on Xbox, it's just business. That's why I think exclusives are just bullshit now. They don't carry the same spirit as exclusives before so I just don't care about them as much, and it's because hardware is just so similar now.

I dunno, I just think you can build identity from the kinds of games a publisher publishes. I don't know if it has to be tied to some hardware. It's already kind of the case with those in the know but maybe they could do some work to give identity to those games to a broader audience. That ties to what I was meant to say before as well in that I don't like the idea of console exclusives needed to breed competition and in the same way I don't believe it has to be the case. I think games are bouncing off each other in the third party space too, they're often in competition with each other. I just think it's very arbitrary now. The Mega Drive and SNES offered very different gaming experiences. The PlayStation, Saturn and N64 offered very different gaming experiences but it hasn't been like that since then really. There's been a bit of a different flavour in the PS2, Xbox and GameCube era but they've been merging a lot from that point. I don't think the last few gens have offered different experiences just access to certain games.

I dunno, just sounds like a lot of fretting to me. Will Xbox and PlayStation be as they are now in 5 years? probably not, but that doesn't mean death. Always treating a change with the most catastrophising. They've found themselves going down a road that isn't sustainable with exclusives, so the choice is to adapt or turn around and they aren't gonna do the latter. I'd like it if they reduced budgets and made more games but they set a precedent and their audience has certain expectations now. I don't know if it's gonna end up being good, but I can't see staying the course being good either so I am leaning towards thinking it'll be better to change towards making their games available in more places.

Pokémon Yakuza

Reminds me a bit of when I watched Pan's Labyrinth for the second time a while after it came out I completely forgot it was in Spanish. @Jimboxy Maybe try Prisoners but I recommend it with the caveat that it is pretty brutal.

This is what I hate about social media in that someone will say something like this and then it becomes all or nothing. It's great the way Villeneuve makes films, using the language of cinema more than dialogue. But I'm not sure which films he's talking about. What if Tarantino didn't focus on dialogue? I know his films are very visual too but there wouldn't be what they are without that snappy dialogue. But maybe that's not what he's talking about. Maybe there has been a bunch of overwritten films that passed me by, I dunno. I just don't like that there should be these rules.

Warframe now has cross save, progression, play and everything. It has for over a month but I just came aware so it means I'm back on it playing my Switch progress on the Xbox. It didn't go smoothly because I'm stupid and can't follow instructions. I got confused at what my "primary account" is. I'm not going to explain in detail because it's boring and makes me look like a moron. But I was able to get in touch with someone who could unlink my accounts and start again, while also using customer service speak to tell me I'm an idiot who can't read. I got there in the end. Since it's been 4 years since I've played it I am having a harder time than I thought relearning all these systems and even how to play well. I've been allowing myself to get carried so much. I played some of the new story stuff that's been added since I last played and it was fine. There is a big piece of story content but it's behind a new "vehicle" called a "Voidrig" which I imagine was a thing you would slowly grind for before the story content dropped, but I wanna do that stuff now so I was a little frustrated by it. I've come to terms with it a bit now though, because I do need to relearn this damn game. I doubt I'll get into it like I did but I'll be back here for a while. It's been pretty fun.

I wanna see some art of Mewtwo breaking down surrounded by pods with Dittos in them.

If you're not sold on the Borderlands action comedy maybe this might be the one

I'd say FF8 is fuck nihilism too.

What to expect from SMTVV: I don't think I'm in any rush to play a rework but I hope the story is improved. While as a game I think it's really good but the story is anemic in the OG version.

Welcome to the club, shiny. I think I'll just say regarding fusing personas is don't be afraid to just liberally fuse them. You always have access to any you've had in your party through the compendium in the velvet room. There is a monetary cost to doing that, sometimes it's very expensive, but that's what the decision is rather than "do I fuse this persona?", it's "do I buy this persona or go find another".

The Citizen Kane of gaming is Legacy of Kane because they both have a guy called Kane in it.

If you put all games on a difficulty spectrum no matter what the Souls games are gonna be pretty far along in the hard part. It's not the hardest game ever but it's in the ball park. What I think most people are responding to in Souls games isn't that they are hard on some inconceivable level, they're very conceivable. But they really relish in killing and putting you in a fail state. Miyazaki has said as much in interviews: Like, I don't think he'd ever tell people to 'git gud', it's more like "didn't you not find it fun when that rolling boulder pushed you off a cliff?"

I suppose I mostly start off on normal these days. There was a time I was a hard mode person. It would make most of the games more satisfying to play but it was frustrating when the game wasn't balanced the best and hard mode would be a slog. Its just not good to have it as a rule because not every hard mode is created equal. I'm glad I played The Last of Us games on hard from the jump because the limited ammo and items does make you play in a more in your face and brutal way and sells on the game's tone better than having all the ammo to play it comfortably as a shooter. I did start Pillars of Eternity recently and I did put that on easy because I have never played a classic CRPG in my life and it's harder for old dogs to learn new tricks. That's gonna be the only kind of situation I'd put a game on easy though. I don't like to say that their should be any rules in regards to how difficulty should work. I know some devs work hard at making a game that's accessable but has a high ceiling, and has lots of customisable options and I respect that. And then there's Miyazaki who is a freak that thinks suffering is great and wants the game to be that, and I respect that creative choice too. Dynamic difficulties that change on how well you're doing are interesting and not used that much. Left 4 Dead and RE4 are probably the most famous for it. It keeps it so you're always at the brink. Do well and you'll have tons of enemies but start messing up and there'll be less and more drops, it gives an effective sense of survival no matter what your skill level is. I kinda like the thing in older arcade or arcade-like games where you only got half the game if you play on easy. I remember Streets of Rage 3 doing this most. I guess it's kinda mean spirited to just drop a bad ending on you like that and told to go back and 'git gud', especially since SoR3 is harder than the others but it worked on me. I did go back and try to get good enough to beat it on normal.

Theurgy makes the game a lot easier, I certainly stopped dying when it became available. Especially since Fuuka has it too. This was when I bumped the difficulty to hard and didn't have any problems. The original was a bit different than other Persona games because you had to be more careful knocking down enemies because they would get up if you hit them while they're down, so you had to be specific getting all the enemies down at once, careful not to use area attacks. But I think they even removed that in vanilla Persona 4. The original game had a lot of bosses with no weaknesses so it's about making use of buffs/debuffs and getting crits from physical attacks. It's not like it's brainless or anything but it is a more chill game.