Video Games General

[Amazon Climber]

Click to shrink...

I didn't know Pokémon Scarlet was a western game.

 

[NoFunposter]

Currently trying to play a new gacha, "Reverse: 1999" and I'm really hoping that the game starts explaining itself soon.

Why is one of the characters a talking apple?
What is an Arcanist?
Why did we just use floppy disks to teleport?

Like I get that it'll probably be explained but at this point I feel like I've been thrown in the deep end and I'm scrambling to make sense of anything.

Which is a good and bad thing, good because the mystery of it all is very gripping, bad because... well I'll get to that.

The art is gorgeous, the gameplay fun, the story is all very mysterious and I want to get to know the characters.

Heck they even have a full English dub and the accents are really selling me on some characters.

But the biggest detractor ruins the dub and makes every sentence of story and lore need way more deciphering then I care to put the effort into.

Who the hell translated and localised the game and why couldn't they do that properly before sending off a script to get read?

There is weird grammar & tenses, really off word choices that have you asking if the choice is deliberate due to lore or just picked out of a thesaurus at random and to top it all off it's dubbed errors and all.
It's not bad enough that you can't follow along, and at times you won't see it crop up for a while, but when it happens it's like a knife to the part of my brain responsible for reading comprehension.

I hear it gets better after the second act, but my brain is currently mush and I feel like I've just walked out of a fever dream.

There is obviously a lot of character and charm but it's seriously held back.

 

[Drak4806]

Currently trying to play a new gacha, "Reverse: 1999"

Click to shrink...

I saw the ads for it and it looked really interesting but I really don't want to start another gacha.

 

[Lykaia]

So apparently part of the reason City Skylines 2 is running poorly is because all the human models are working off of Yandere Dev levels design decisions with them having to render each individual teeth.
https://twitter.com/tombomp/status/1717641500891238536

Click to shrink...

...How do you fuck up that badly? I mean it's Paradox so my expectations are pretty low already but they've somehow managed to not even reach that.

 

[Velk]

...How do you fuck up that badly? I mean it's Paradox so my expectations are pretty low already but they've somehow managed to not even reach that.

Click to shrink...

...The bar is so low that The Devil trips on it and they still find a way to go lower.

 

[NoFunposter]

I saw the ads for it and it looked really interesting but I really don't want to start another gacha.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I was really hesitating on giving it a try for the same reason.

I think I'm going to keep playing it for a bit to see if it becomes any easier to comprehend.

 

[Jamesson Locke]

So apparently part of the reason City Skylines 2 is running poorly is because all the human models are working off of Yandere Dev levels design decisions with them having to render each individual teeth.
https://twitter.com/tombomp/status/1717641500891238536

Click to shrink...

Lmao.
At a certain point it's like an obsession to render everything,


In related graphics news: I bought Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 again and ... The nostalgia and Rimworld esque music ... I could spend weeks in this. Even if the fact you can pop balloons and blow the feathers off ducks does feel a little like the park manager is sitting off screen with a sniper rifle.

(Also the character models have about as many polygons as one individual tooth there. Fuck you Paradox.)

 

[TACOBANA]

Lmao.
At a certain point it's like an obsession to render everything,


In related graphics news: I bought Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 again and ... The nostalgia and Rimworld esque music ... I could spend weeks in this. Even if the fact you can pop balloons and blow the feathers off ducks does feel a little like the park manager is sitting off screen with a sniper rifle.

(Also the character models have about as many polygons as one individual tooth there. Fuck you Paradox.)

Click to shrink...

So is rendering like crack cocaine to those guys? Or is it more apt to compare it to meth?

 

[TheFabulousCustodes]

Just remember that respecing perks can be done at will, but you only get 1 stat respec.

Click to shrink...

Wound up Stat respeccing to use the Pistol tree, instead of AR's. So far, I'm not regretting it.

Any suggestions on which hacks to carry?

 

[Hunter 1]

Wound up Stat respeccing to use the Pistol tree, instead of AR's. So far, I'm not regretting it.

Any suggestions on which hacks to carry?

Click to shrink...

Well, keep in mind that I'm running a fully upgraded T5++ deck (the Netwatch Netdiver Mk1, aka the only iconic deck in the base game) and as such using T5 hacks... my recommendations are part of my setup:

Ping, because it's given to you for free for a damn good reason
System Collapse, aka the "go away" hack, useful on 99% of all enemies... and it's non-lethal, too!
Cyberware Malfunction; for those foes that just try to overwhelm you with cyberware (cyberpsychos say hello), having a good cheap "lol no" button handy is nice (just remember to use it twice on any given target, otherwise the cyberware will be back online in seconds)
Memory Wipe, nice for stealth takedowns

Feel free to use the other 4 slots on most T5 decks for whatever you want, and remember that not only are some hacks exclusive to higher tiers, but earlier hacks get more effects at higher tiers (Weapon Glitch, for example, outright destroys an enemy's primary weapon at T4 and 5), deal more damage, or just last longer... but often come with higher RAM costs, as well as requiring a higher tier cyberdeck.

If you have Phantom Liberty and any interest in using Monowire, then you also might want to hold on to a spare copy of a Control-type hack that you'd like to semi-passively inflict in combat... but remember that the hack in question still needs to be the same or lower tier as the Monowire.

 

[NoFunposter]

Yeah, I was really hesitating on giving it a try for the same reason.

I think I'm going to keep playing it for a bit to see if it becomes any easier to comprehend.

Click to shrink...

Update: It became easier to comprehend and the translation seems to get better mid-way through chapter 2.

But they killed off best girl.

 

[Yavinus]

So apparently part of the reason City Skylines 2 is running poorly is because all the human models are working off of Yandere Dev levels design decisions with them having to render each individual teeth.

Click to shrink...

Lmao.
At a certain point it's like an obsession to render everything,

Click to shrink...

It's so baffling like, at least that kind of level of detail would make some modium of sense with things like first/third person games in which close proximity to things would justify it. Not that it is always good or even necessary, but at least AAA games can have the excuse in those cases.

But for a simulator/mangement game in which characters.are just merely dollhouse toys in which you watch from a bird like perspective in the sky is just...we are to a point in graphical fidelity in which obssesion with detail has reached it's natural singularity. By which is that is either going fowards into a full collpase in more and more pixels or just admit we have reached the most in realism and just use the current power of hardware to handle no fidelity but deeper gameplay mechanics that were not possible in the past.

Obviosuly there are examples of this in the present but certain developers must wake up before the "graphical inbreeding" of AAA games obsessed with meaningless details reaches into the equivalent to Charles II of Spain in terms of inbreeding. Sure it belongs to the equivalent to "royalty" in gaming (AAA) but at this point the problems that came with it are too much and is barely functional.

 

[SamantaDomson]

Currently trying to play a new gacha, "Reverse: 1999" and I'm really hoping that the game starts explaining itself soon.

Why is one of the characters a talking apple?
What is an Arcanist?
Why did we just use floppy disks to teleport?

Like I get that it'll probably be explained but at this point I feel like I've been thrown in the deep end and I'm scrambling to make sense of anything.

Which is a good and bad thing, good because the mystery of it all is very gripping, bad because... well I'll get to that.

The art is gorgeous, the gameplay fun, the story is all very mysterious and I want to get to know the characters.

Heck they even have a full English dub and the accents are really selling me on some characters.

But the biggest detractor ruins the dub and makes every sentence of story and lore need way more deciphering then I care to put the effort into.

Who the hell translated and localised the game and why couldn't they do that properly before sending off a script to get read?

There is weird grammar & tenses, really off word choices that have you asking if the choice is deliberate due to lore or just picked out of a thesaurus at random and to top it all off it's dubbed errors and all.
It's not bad enough that you can't follow along so check out guide on this site, and at times you won't see it crop up for a while, but when it happens it's like a knife to the part of my brain responsible for reading comprehension.

I hear it gets better after the second act, but my brain is currently mush and I feel like I've just walked out of a fever dream.

There is obviously a lot of character and charm but it's seriously held back so you can check out guide on this site.

Click to shrink...

I haven't played the game, but the ads I saw were very promising
But agree that the talking apple and teleportation via floppy disks do add a unique flavor to the game's mystery.

 

[NoFunposter]

I haven't played the game, but the ads I saw were very promising
But agree that the talking apple and teleportation via floppy disks do add a unique flavor to the game's mystery.

Click to shrink...

I think I've kind of cracked on to what might be going on there

Spoiler: Spoilers + theory crafting

My current theory is it being related to how the "Storm" ends an era and regresses time.

Just before the storm hits, everyone who isn't an Arcanist starts experiencing something called "Storm Syndrome" where they start getting warped by how their era is perceived in history.
(People becoming Pop Art in the 60s & in 1929 just after the stock market crashed leading to the great depression, an event accelerated to artificially accelerate the gathering storm, people started to full sensory hallucinate that money/gold/wealth is food and that food is inedible, killing themselves via ingesting cash/molten gold/etc.)
Metaphor and Allegory running wild in reality while time breaks down.

This is referred to as being "Filtered out".

I think some people are being sort of distilled by this filtering process at points in history.

The Apple for example keeps mentioning gravity, falling and light.

The plate gauntlets & sword have a story segment about 12 paladins following The Great, sings a song about Roland and talks about an old friend of his journeying all the way to the moon on his behalf.

So I think if the person isn't an Arcanist but is someone who may or may not exist but will be remembered as a key part of what the public thinks of when remembering an era, they dodge the filter but become changed from the experience.

I'm liking the protagonist Vertin so far too, she's serious and plays her cards close enough to her chest that even we the player only get to see some of them.

But she's not cold, just very lonely and driven.

There are however memes already.

Spoiler

I think that one applys to quite a bit of the cast actually.

As for the characters, they're diverse, near the start my team consisted of the four free characters and a common 4-star I'd substitute in as needed, and they're all interesting even if they're not the rarest.

Spoiler

• Free secretary character: Sonetto, the pale, ginger Italian who you wouldn't know is Italian until she gets agitated and starts emphasising her speech with hand gestures.

Spoiler

• Hawaiian Gomer Pyle: Leilani, the overly friendly magical child soldier who can't distinguish between an exam and live combat.

Spoiler

• The Boy Scouts of America (Girl): Eagle. She seems normal, abnormally so for an arcanist. I expect child trafficking, but there is a throw away line in her bio mentioning Institutum Lorentz, so maybe she's Captain Illuminati. Which doesn't disqualify child trafficking by the way.

Spoiler

• APPLe. Apple. 60% sure he is Isaac Newton at this point, he uses gravity and light manipulation so it fits. He is a talking, floating apple and none of the arcanists bat an eye.

Spoiler

• Fighting for her life and for us from her levitating life support system/Magical Staff: Cristallo. Literally as fragile as Glass (in lore not in gameplay), she's a mineral mage whose expertise is a radioactive isotope of cobalt. She microwaves enemies and is especially nasty for healers and regenerators.

Spoiler

It very well has it's hooks in me now I think.

 

[Rivan9000]

Ok so I've picked up God Eater(basiclly edgy anime Monster Hunter) for the first time in forever. I had forgotten how damn grim it all is. Just the fact that almost all plant life is dead and the only reason they still have a breathable atmosphere is because of the Aragami.

The whole tone is very much a slow march to extinction. The anime is even worse (episode 5 was outright traumatizing)

And I'm hearing that GE3 is even darker. Geez.

I still love the games; they are legitimately good and were my introduction to the Monster Hunter genre.

Honestly, I'm having more fun with GE then I did with a lot of new releases.

As a completely unrelated aside I did not care for the new spiderman.

Spoiler: Episode 5 trauma just in case you want to see what I mean

 

[Digital_Devil]

And I'm hearing that GE3 is even darker. Geez.

Click to shrink...

GE2R was my introduction to the series. I still remember the rain scene pretty vividly. The state of the world in GE3 is significantly worse, with humans not even being able to survive outside anymore, being sequestered into underground "ports" and massive land ships that move between them. The tone is on the more hopeful side, but the world is definitely the worst its ever been in 3.

 

[Jomasten]

so because it was on sale, decided to pick library of ruina

fun game, but i feel like i need to know lore from lobotomy corporation to understand half of the backstories of the librarians.

also has that skorean gacha story flare; everything is shit but you learn to live with it long enough it becomes your new normal.

 

[Rakdos92]

For the Yakuza fans among us, there's a story trailer and a gameplay one about a month ago. I'm a bit surprised no one talked about here.

Spoiler

While the OG three return for the party, I'd hazard a guess and say Kiryu, that taxi driver-slash-assassin, and Ichiban's mom's meido will join the party as well. As cool as it would be, I doubt Zhao and- no, nevermind, they are actually part of the party too! Nice!

Limited movement during combat, thank God. If I have to miss multiple enemies again because the selected character moved to the left or right, I'm going to pop a vein. I like how Kiryu's special is just "Gameplay is now Yakuza 0!"

Kiryu has cancer. I guess all these smokes finally caught up to him...

That Ichiban lost all his wealth because of a freaking VTuber is pretty on-brand for the post-Kiryu series. And I love it!

 

[Scygnus]

Decided to do another LttP/SM combo randomizer run.

I have most things... but, of all the items to be missing, I'm going into the Ridley fight without the fucking charge beam of all things. Which means if I run out of missiles I'm humped. I should have enough, but bleeeeh I hate it. There's like, one or two items I could go dig up elsewhere, but the chance is pretty low, since Ridley's the last boss I need to get into Ganon's Tower and there's so many chests in there.

Aside: Random idea for an SI fic... where you get sent to Video Land as Captain SNES (and may I say I can't believe that damn comic is still going, even if it's like one strip a year) but since it's based on your last playthroughs and you were fucking with all kinds of randomizers, the whole place is randomized.

 

[Amazon Climber]

There's like, one or two items I could go dig up elsewhere, but the chance is pretty low, since Ridley's the last boss I need to get into Ganon's Tower and there's so many chests in there.

Click to shrink...

I understand what's going on, but it still sounds like a retro gamer's fever dream.

 

[Scygnus]

I understand what's going on, but it still sounds like a retro gamer's fever dream.

Click to shrink...

lolyes.

...Also, I forgot about Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Fuck. I know I can Screw Attack them, but it's a pain the ass to time it.

EDIT: Wait, no, you can't screw attack them, but you don't need the charge beam. It's been a while.

 

[Vanargandr]

EYOOOOOO

 

[Vanrus]

I've never heard of a combo rando before but it sounds sick. Probably the most complicated ones I've seen are OoT no logic randos, usually with weird settings like dungeons locked behind bosses

 

[Madgizmo99]

I've never heard of a combo rando before but it sounds sick. Probably the most complicated ones I've seen are OoT no logic randos, usually with weird settings like dungeons locked behind bosses

Click to shrink...

By combo rando do you mean ones that swap between games? cause I know of one for Link to the Past and Super Metroid, i've seen streams of it.

 

[Scygnus]

By combo rando do you mean ones that swap between games? cause I know of one for Link to the Past and Super Metroid, i've seen streams of it.

Click to shrink...

That's the one.

It's pretty fun, though there are times when the logic makes you use specific tricks to get to certain items- probably. Might've just been me forgetting about one item in one spot. I have gotten stuck though. I know bomb jump is in normal logic, but I'm not sure what else. You'll occasionally find yourself doing hell runs and dark rooms with no lantern, trying to find a progression item to get to more stuff.

And get good at walljumping. You'll need it.

Just... watch out for softlocking on the Metroid side if you have power bombs but not regular bombs. If you only have five or ten, it's easy to get yourself stuck when you run out, since only certain enemies actually drop them.

 

[Madgizmo99]

It's pretty fun, though there are times when the logic makes you use specific tricks to get to certain items- probably. Might've just been me forgetting about one item in one spot. I have gotten stuck though. I know bomb jump is in normal logic, but I'm not sure what else. You'll occasionally find yourself doing hell runs and dark rooms with no lantern, trying to find a progression item to get to more stuff.

Click to shrink...

Considering that Metroid Dread had a few things that needed bomb jumping, I am not surprised.

 

[Vanrus]

Bomb jumping is pretty regular but I'd assuming if it has regular logic and not glitched logic there probably isn't anything crazy.

 

[Scygnus]

Considering that Metroid Dread had a few things that needed bomb jumping, I am not surprised.

Click to shrink...

Dread bomb jumps ain't shit. They're not that high and I think you get Spring Ball either by default or very early. The timing is a hell of a lot easier too.

Meanwhile, once or twice with the randomizer I've had to use them to get to the secret upper left area at the landing site. Something like 15-20 bomb jumps in a row in open air, fail and start over. You can walljump up there too, but it's even harder, especially if you don't have the high-jump boots.

Bomb jumping is pretty regular but I'd assuming if it has regular logic and not glitched logic there probably isn't anything crazy.

Click to shrink...

I think there's regular logic and 'hard' logic... and maybe glitched logic?

Regular doesn't include the really hard speed run tricks like the Mach Ball and Hero Jump. But it has bomb jumps, and I think that damn continuous long jump trick I got only once- the one where you can get to outside of Wrecked Ship without gravity, grapple, or space. You have to hit the room you normally grapple across at a dead run, leap out to the pillar poking out of the water, and walljump off the opposite side without touching it otherwise- frame perfect or almost - in order to maintain enough speed to get to the opposite side without dropping in the water.

I've given up several games because it looked like that was my only option.


On the Zelda side it's usually easier- at worst you have to do rooms in the dark, and if you know where everything is you can usually figure out a route. Also taking on enemies and bosses with inferior equipment sometimes, but that's a considerably more minor skill issue than SM tricks.

 

[Raven1138]

New model Steam Deck with OLED screen announced and will be on sale November 16th.

Besides the new 7.4" OLED screen, the new Decks have several under the hood improvements including better cooling and a bigger battery. The OLED will come in a 512GB model and a 1TB model ($529 and $649 with a Limited Edition 1TB at $679) and the 256GB non-OLED will have a proce drop to $399. The 64GB and non-OLED 512GB will be discontinued, but both will receive a deep discount to $349 and $449.

 

[AllyDoodle]

Considering she is pretty cute, I'm suprised there isn't already a ton of porn of the Princess from Slay The Princess. And that isn't even getting into some of her other forms.