Leaderboard

Doing better. I wouldn't say doing good yet, but just better.

What features you miss that recent games usually don't include, but used to be commonplace in the past? 1. I definitely miss scorekeeping and high scores. When every enemy type and or action had an assigned score value, and depending on how many you defeated you'd get a score at the end of each level. I think the last game I've seen doing anything even remotely similar was Splinter Cell Blacklist. 2. I also miss regular manual on demand save games. Instead of this checkpoint based junk we have nowadays. But when you could save at any location and time in a game as long as you were not engaged in action. 3. Fancy installers. Nowadays when you play a game you just use some dull client to download them, even on consoles the installation of games is only a mundane progress bar. Older games used to have these interactive installers that already started you down the lore of the game building your immersion just as the game was being installed.

You read that right. The Ukrainian developer Frogwares took to social media when their H. P. Lovecraft inspired adventure/horror game reappeared for sale on Steam. They urged fans not to buy their own game from Steam as this game was put back on sale on Valve's PC storefront buy their French publisher Nacon without the developer's approval or cooperation. The game was originally removed from Steam back in August 2020 by Frogwares due to a dispute over unpaid royalties and rights of control over the game. Frogwares originally filed a lawsuit a year earlier over said despute. According to Frogwares, they were happy to have the game remain on sale during this legal process and hopefully deal with the situation quietly, but lost patience and thus pulled the game from sale. Nacon took this action to an appeal court in Paris who ruled in the publisher's favour, ordering Frogwares not take any further action in relation to the contract with Nacon until the dispute had been resolved. This meant The Sinking City could return to Steam and indeed Frogwares did re-up it in January 2021, but it was pulled once again soon after. Why it was placed back on sale by Frogwares only to pulled almost immediately, I don't know. Then, on February 26th, the game suddenly appeared back on Steam yet again. According to Frogwares, this is an older, less polished version of the game, most likely a pre-release presented to Nacon before the game originally launched as a show of progress that was never actually meant to be sold. A more detailed article on this mess from Eurogamer here. To me, this is just the action of a desperate and bitter publisher that thinks they can get away with not paying their due to a game developer. It takes an extreme situation to bring a developer to say "don't buy our game". I'd also say this doesn't look great for Steam. It's no secret their vetting is a joke, but for a less polished version of a game to reappear on Steam without the developer's approval is something else. In Nacon's defence, though, many of the issues this version of the game has are resolvable if Frogwares offered support for updates, cloud saving and other online mechanisms that they are withholding right now, so the state of the game isn't entirely Nacon's fault. In the end, this publisher dose have a case to claim rights to thier IP's as publishers do and are justified in defending those rights. However, if it's true that they haven't paid Frogwares what they're due, my sympathy evaporates fairly quickly. I'm not gonna let Frogwares fully off the hook either. They put the game back on sale for it only to removed almost immediately three months after the court of appeal ordered them not to take action in relation to their contract with Nacon. That's likely why the game was removed so quickly. Why do that? The important thing here though is DO NOT buy this game on Steam. The game is available on PS4 as well, but I'm a little unsure if this debacle has affected that version or not. Still, this game is probably best avoided entirely for now until this mess is cleared up. What do you guys think of this? Who's in the right, who's in the wrong and what needs to happen going forward.

I suppose TLOU2 could be considered to be in that category by playing as Abby and Ellie. It's not as simple a case as one's the antagonist and one's the protagonist, but for fear of spoiling the game I'm not gonna explain further, but the way they did it definitely creates a lot of conflict within the player.

Niiiice.

You know, it's weird that this game doesn't get as much praise as some of the other Mario games out there. Similarly to my Mario Kart 64 topic, I wanted to start a topic for Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. Reason why, is because I feel this game is overlooked by many. In fact, I didn't even know about it until my teen years. I was only aware of Super Mario World and not the sequel. I actually just got the game like 5 or so years ago and played it for the first time around then. It's so much different from the first SMW game, that I think that's a big reason why. Playing as Yoshi and baby mario is fun, but I feel like fans didn't enjoy it as much, though I could be wrong. Anyway, what do you guys think of this classic? I wish it was a bit more popular these days, because from what I have played of it, it's a fantastic game.

Any realism games are based from simulator. Train sims, Flight sims, You name it 🙂 I have spent hours on Euro trucking as well as Amercian Trucks. P3D and other flight sims that are around in total 3000 hours on the clock for me.

Thank the heavens that the Gods saved you. Mobile games are such cesspools, you probably had to pay just to open the app. I think you need to get some counselling mate(I'm kidding btw).

Dying Light 2 is like that father that has gone to the store to get some milk and still hasn't shown up yet - 10 years later but you hope your dad will come back. That's how I feel about Dying Light 2 - I want to get my hopes up but it's a broken record at this point. I mean they've postponed the game a million times now.

As @skyfire says, some stretching can help you out as well. I recommend stopping every 20-30 minutes and taking a break - just walk to the fridge and back. At least get some blood flowing in your lower body.

Twisted Metal 3 was the unpopular and I'm still confused why it even gets that kind of rating. I mean it was as solid as the other two with a few new additions but it was extremely divisive.

Eh, I have to disagree, as this game never really took off. If anything, it was pretty much dead on arrival. The userbase pretty much dropped the game soon after release. There are some devoted fans, but most people dropped out of the game soon after they finished it. Cyberpunk 2077 is far from a flop though. It didn't live up to the hype though, but I wouldn't say it was a flop, considering they still made a shit ton on the game, even with all the problems.

I do find it surprising, but there's a number of reasons I've seen why don't see this happen often. The first being that games enthusiasts think multiple endings are good, when really it depends entirely on the talent of the writers and their confidence in the story they want to tell, and the audience they want to tell it to. With multiple origins if one is bad it could well turn off the player for the rest of the game, but comes at a lower risk because there's other beginnings to choose from if one doesn't work out and won't sour the past, say, 40 hours of gameplay. The second hypothesis I have is that, going back to competent writers, multiple origins don't matter if they're completely disregarded, such is the case with Dragon Age: Origins' expansion Awakening, and the sequels. Dragon Age was not intended to be a franchise, which explains why its narrative is so incredibly well woven. Your origins matter in DA:O, but only in the vacuum that is that one game. If we are to see more games with multiple origin paths devs have to be prepared to either make it a one-shot, have a sequel that is completely unrelated with the same mechanics and tone, or have a sequel that's a direct continuation knowing full well there'll be additional story.

Yoga, exercise, walk and also taking break after every 40 minutes is the way to go. There is no other way out of it. If you cross 30s, then yes take more breaks and work in small batches. Gaming more than 2 hour straight after 30s would kill you slowly like smoking and alcohol consumption. You may notice this early or maybe in 45 or so but burnout will happen.

Back pain is not normal, you should change your chair or sitting position if you experience back pain.

Cyberpunk 2077. It certainly lacks any buildup, and 90% of establishing your character and their relations are done in a 20 second mashup video. They should've let you play the events of that 20 seconds in at least 2-3 hours of introductory gameplay. Instead of the extremely lame tutorial.

I will be absent from the forum for an extended period. My baby Gypsy died tonight. My mind has mostly shut off and I can barely think. I can barely even breathe. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I will eventually return at some point.