Tonberry

Probably a rare pick, when I was at a friend's house (who played much more M-rated games than me) I was so traumatized by the introduction in Max Payne 1 when his family gets murdered that I immediately ran home completely shattered and just started crying.

Fair enough, but it's a relatively common way to refer to games with "fetch quests" and grindy number-based progression. Most people refer to games as "Singleplayer MMOs" in a derogatory way though since people who don't play MMOs tend to call out the skinnerbox-aspects harder, but I don't mind it. I think it's a perfectly fine description for a very small subset of games with a very particular design structure. Extra interesting with Amalur as there are some speculation and datamined files that might suggest that the game was originally supposed to be an actual MMO, but that two projects on the same studio got mashed together to create the final game. Of course, there's nothing wrong with having different perspectives either :)

In recent years it's probably Assassin's Creed: Valhalla or Dragon Quest 11. I'm not done with either but I remember clocking in on something like 80 hours in Valhalla and I'm probably only a bit over halfway. It's a big game with a lot of distractions though, but even then the story mode is insanely long. I heard about that game. It supposedly plays alot like a singleplayer MMO, right? In that it's got quests and leveling typical for that subgenre and stuff. Always wanted to try it out for myself, since it sounds like something I'd enjoy to play through during a whole summer or something.

8/10 The Skyrim theme is great, but I personally prefer the version from Morrowind! It doesn't have as much narrative but I like the mysterious "sunrise" kind of feel it has. This isn't Morrowind haha, it would be boring of me to link something so similar, but I recently delved back into this game after not really giving it a chance when it released on Wii U and have had a blast so far, so much cool music! Especially love how this one sort of evolves and lets every instrument have its own time to shine.

Final Fantasy Souls Street Fighter Zelda Elder Scrolls Megaman Those are my very favourites off the top of my head at least!

I like watching the occasional Let's Play or VoD stream of a person playing a game, but in 99.9% of the cases it's more to do with me enjoying listening to the particular person playing as the format is often comedic in nature, but if it's a game I haven't played in a long time or something new I'd like to see but I know I'll probably not get myself I tend to be more invested in the actual video, else I treat it more like a podcast. Though of course it happens from time to time that I just open a video of an old game and watch, but I've emulated games since I was a kid so if there's something I don't have my in my physical collection anymore I'll usually find a way to give it a whirl, even if only for like a night or something.

Seconding this. I'd sooner use dynamite as a currency.

Yeah I was about to reply with this aswell. I like being by myself, and playing games solo gives me peace of mind and time to think (or not think if that's what I need at the moment haha). Though I wouldn't call myself lonely because of that, since I enjoy it and have other outlets to be with friends and family :)

I'm going to be on the lookout for Mario Party Superstars, but knowing my luck and the fact that it's a Nintendo game, I probably won't find the kind of deal I'm looking for haha

Narrative-driven games have become better at this, but like a decade ago it was really stupid how the "Good" choice in a conversation would be to hand a sick guy a potion to help him maybe feel a little better, and the "Bad" option would be to insult him profusely, then shoot him in the head, steal his credit card, wire his entire family's savings to yourself, kick his dog and take a bite of his lunch. This was for like EVERY game that had a "Your choices matter!!!" bullet point lol

What a stupid thing to say. Or at least the way he implies it makes it sound like he's the first person on Earth to come up with the idea. But it's been done lots of times, from your example in Walking Dead, to Metal Gear Solid 5 where the missions start with credits and the like. The hypothesis you're providing aswell ("We'll probably get seasons, and episodes to coincide with said seasons") is even more alarming to me since that might give them leeway to release bits of a full game while charging a premium for every single entry (since games take way longer to produce than a season of a TV show generally). I have nothing against Naughty Dog's games, they make super high quality stuff, but Druckmann just seems to be completely full of himself and super pretentious at all times lol.

Hahaha holy shit, I had no idea, that's amazing. I've never seen that one but in case you didn't know it's a spoof of the old 1984 Apple commercial, which makes it even funnier.

Ooooh yeah, completely forgot about that one. Great stuff!

There have been a plethora of commercials for video games over the decades, ranging from informative, to whacky, to funny, and to outright stupid and bizarre. What are some of your favourites you remember? My all-time favourite is probably the Japanese ad for Zelda: A Link to the Past. It's just a crazy live-action dance number, and once it's over you realize it didn't have a single second of actual game in it, but it sure had crazy staying power, and a funky beat to top it all off: Another classic is the ad for Super Smash Bros. on N64. I always laugh at how they're just people in suits fighting drunkedly in real-life: This was the only commercial I managed to see for myself on TV, one time. I was blown away and actually kept searching for it on other channels, but alas it only appeared once. I thought it lookd insanely cool: There was something special about seeing your favourite hobby on the TV back then. (It's much more common to see ads for games nowadays, but they're usually quick showcases or straight up trailers, since TV and ads work differently now), even as a commercial. It kind of made it feel even "bigger" when you were little and only knew Zelda from bleeps and bloops on your Gameboy. What do you all think?

I'm not sure. I know that my first own Playstation game was Kingdom Hearts, which I got for christmas exactly 20 years ago, along with our PS2. I touched upon it in another post somewhere but I was completely blown away by how it looked and played, since everything I had seen prior had been N64 and PS1 games, and only from when I was at friends' houses. I'm fairly certain I've at least seen something like Spyro or Final Fantasy 7 or like Tony Hawk at a neighbours house before that though, not knowing what they were I'll keep Kingdom Hearts as my choice here to further make the memory stand out. Man, my parents knew from nothing but the box art that it'd be something me and my brother would love, and it's probably what made me delve deeper into my biggest video game love, which is Final Fantasy. <3

Coming back to this thread. I watched the GotG Holiday Special and had a great time, so I was inspired to install the game on PS5 and check it out (It was only 31gb!) and after playing the first two stages I can say that it definitely feels really fun. I really like the little dialog systems where you can join in on the banter, and the combat feels really good!

They do! It sounds risky at first but there really isn't anything to worry about. The candles are often really tall aswell. Here's a video of a recent procession I found on Youtube, I've timestamped the part where "Lucia" enters and you can see the candles. :) Merry christmas!

I think this feels more like gamers just trying to get a quick buck, or doing it "for the lulz". Either that, or hardcore Sony fans have truly lost it.

Yeah the story mode was genuinely great. I also adored the multiplayer because it felt SO big and varied with all those crazy traits and customization options. Haven’t played any CoD since Black Ops 1 unfortunately so I can’t speak about whether or not the newer ones are better.

It depends on the game. I like turning off a few options in The Witcher 3 and I use the Explorer Mode in AC Valhalla, but in WoW for example I use the quest marker extensively since I’ve played it for so long that I kind of jump through dialog in the quest boxes.

Just about every system has had a somewhat memorable dashboard, for better or worse. Do you have any particularly fond experiences of user interfaces from consoles from over the years? Do you think about them at all? I’m personally actually particularly fond of the PS4 dashboard, though I hear it’s not super popular, but I liked that you could make folders, use themes and it was all pretty well connected and had great social options. Before we got a PS5 I had stuck with the Firewatch dynamic theme for the longest time, it even changed color based on time of day. Feel asleep to the relaxing music tons of times.

The official game is still up and running. I would probably have tried it sooner if I enjoy the private server this much, but since it's subscription based and notorious for being old and pretty clunky I've never committed to it. It's also seemingly pretty different compared to this "classic" server. Whjich is probably both good and bad. There's more incentive to be able to play it solo nowadays, since it was such a group-heavy game but its age has probably made player numbers dwindle quite a bit.

Yeah I didn't play many fighting games at that point (It came way later) so I wonder if getting the game would have made me a fighting fan earlier.

I think that more private servers will start to pop up sooner or later. Nowadays and historically they've only really been available to old shooters and MMOs, but in recent years they've become insanely much more stable and close to the original experience thanks to the wizardry of the ones developing them. And I'm fairly certain that reverse-engineering games, and especially online games since running a server is something a regular person can do nowadays, will only become easier and easier as time progresses, but I guess we'll see in the future.

Oh damn don't remind me. I once convinced my mom to let me buy DoA2 on PS2 because it was a cool fighting game, but in reality I was a stupid kid who just wanted to look at the jiggle effects. When I went to the store to buy it I felt so embarrassed that I just never got it. I got 3 when I started collecting Xbox games awhile back and had a great time in the arcade mode. Super impressive graphics for the time, and it feels really fast and powerful to play. As for favourite fighter, I'm pretty sure I played Hayabusa the most, and then maybe Tina? I wish I could remember what I bought instead...