Shagger

I think I have the answer;

Another day, another game released busted. This time it's the PC port of one of the best games ever made, The Last of Us Part 1 that is now sitting at a mostly negative on steam. Also stem reckons that game might suit me for being similar to Fallout 4, which seams crazy to me. The complaints range from bad optimisation to stability problems with crashes and the game running poorly. This port was developed by both Naughty Dog themselves and Iron Galaxy who are a developer who mostly do ports and support development for other developers. They have had mixed success with good ports games like Skyrim on Nintendo Switch and Crash Bandicoot N-Sane Trilogy on PC, to Batman Arkham Knight on PC (That really was a train wreck). I also hear that that the game itself was cracked on day 1 of release, not that one would want to pirate this in it's current state anyway without the patch's the game sorely needs. If you or someone you know is interested in this, it's best to wait until the game has been fixed and Naughty Dog have confirmed that they are working on it. Even so, it's really disappointing to see this happen yet again. There's no way they didn't know, so why not just push it back to make sure it's ready? I don't know why in 2023 game publishers and developers continue to do this. They know what happens, we've all seen it time and time again. The best advice being offered to anyone interested in this game right now is to wait. HZD had some issues at launch as well (but nothing like this) and did end up as a great PC port, so faith in Naughty Dog to fix this would be well placed, but they deserve the criticism for allowing this to happen in the first place.

And you know what, screw it. I'm going to give you all crash course, or in @m76's case, a "reminder" as somebody who actually knows his genres to what constitutes as a looter shooter. A looter shooter is focused (and that's important) on the player obtaining in-game items of various rarities to customise the appearance, characteristics and performance of the player in a 3rd or 1st person person shooter gameplay environment. The heart of a looter shooter is a quest to become better equipped, more powerful and, well, look cooler. Customization is key in a looter shooter with the ability to alter an item's appearance all the way down to the colour and even texture is all but a necessity. That is the core gameplay of a looter shooter. Not story, not roleplay, or even the combat. In a looter shooter, it's all about the customisation and the reward of obtaining top-end gear. A looter shooter doesn't need to be a primarily multiplayer game (Take Borderlands, for example), but multiplayer and/or social integration are a staple of the genre. Loot is almost always entirely randomised, not like in HZD with it very limited amount of randomization and predictability depending on the strength and type of enemy. You can't even dye your cloths in HZD, much less customise Aloy herself. No looter shooter worth it's weight in dung would be without full character customisation. Even in HFW where you can dye the clothing (But still not change Aloy's base appearance), these options are mostly earned through in-game trading with merchants, not as loot drops like how it should be in a looter shooter. In the Horizon games, the reward for playing the game, like any game of it's type, is the adventure, not the loot, so it is not a looter shooter. And I can't believe I just had to explain that to human adult to claims to be a gamer.

This was going to be a reply to @m76 on the thread I started in tribute to the late actor Lance Reddick, but since I didn't want that of all threads to devolve into some irrelevant debate, I decided to just do this as a new topic. This is here to basically debate what qualifies a game to be a part of a certain genre. I'll go into some details about my own specific nuances about this further down, but first my response to @m76 with regard to this: You earn loot from defeated enemies in most, if not all RPGs, because that's what HZD is. And to be honest, that is debatable as even though you play as Aloy, you don't really decide much in terms of her fate and how the story goes, so it could be described as an open world action/adventure and I wouldn't argue. But either way, it's definitely not a looter shooter. The same mechanics you described exist in Assassin's Creed, Diablo, Hogwarts Legacy and not to mention pretty every MMO and MOBA, are they looter shooters too? Seriously, you review video games, don't you? How can anyone be expected to take your reviews seriously when you can't even get the genre of a game right! I know genre definition is open to interpretation (The whole purpose of this topic), but that is WAY off. And by the way, I'd advise you to be careful when you through the term "lootbox" around because, for most gamers, it doesn't mean earned-in-game-only loot from destroying enemies in the form of a box you open with a random selection of items inside that can't buy through a microtransaction. People might misinterpret your meaning. Proper, professional reviews know how to make that clear. Onto the topic. RPG or JRPG? I briefly touched on what sets an open world action adventure from an RPG already, and to be honest I'm still trying to define for myself on what that difference is, so how about what the difference is between Western Style RPG's JRPGs for a kick-off. This has been discussed before both on and off the forum, and before I give my two cents I want to call attention to this video Jim Stephanie Stirling posted a few weeks back as I think it's quite interesting; Anyway, to me calling something a JRPG was meant meant to be derogatory, all it meant to me was calling into attention a certain style and philosophy of RPG gameplay made famous primally by Japanese developers. Whilst the gameplay itself can vary greatly, that philosophy to me was about combining strategy into the action and making it more of a focus. Western RPG's tend to be more about skill in combat itself. The art style is also a big thing for me as JRPG also tend to be more stylised whereas Western RPGs try to emulate the real world a little more closely. One is better than the other, it's just a different philosophy. I love both and do think that can be considered separate genres because to me there is that separate philosophy and style that separates them. for example, Dragon's Dogma is a western RPG. That's how it it plays, that's how it looks, that's how it feels, despite being the work of a Japanese developer/publisher, Capcom. Traits one would more associate with JRPGs have been in western made games too, like Child of Light, Temtem and Indivisible. There certain in life, but for sure the sun rises in the east, it sets in the west and this debate will go on for every moment in between until we die. What you have read is merely my opinion. Strategy Games For me this is very simple. A pure strategy game should take no skill to play. Nobody will be impressed by you juggling the pawns in a chess tournament, and it's the same with strategy games. It's not easy to generalise these terms to suit every strategy game out there, but rhe user interface is there to allow you to place your pieces, units, buildings or whatever whare to want them to best execute your desired strategy with no direct input no thier actions from you. Some strategy games will allow for direct control of things on occasion, like the possession spell in Dungeon Keeper, and that's ok, but the mean of the game is and should be and hand of approach. You tell things what to do, you don't actually do it. That's a strategy game. Obviously, there can be strategy and tactics in other types of games too, but when that combines a skill based input, then it's not a strategy game. It's some other kind of game with strategy elements, strategy mechanics. Bringing us back to to JRPGs, a lot of them are like that and may even be pure strategy games in combat, but there's still role-play, you're still being the character, so it's not the same thing. Anyway, that's enough from me for now. What's your thoughts on what defines a genre?

I've been playing World of Warships a lot the last few days and, I must say, I'm diggin' it. The subject matter itself is interesting to me anyway and the game is fun to play. I even find myself to be pretty decent at it and usually rank well. One match I had recently had an interesting ending for me. We lost, but I was the MVP with the best score I've ever had in anything; Anyway, if anyone's interseted in adding me me on the game's friend... social... clan... whatever the hell it is, feel free.

I can see exactly what she's trying to do. She thinks she can trip democrats up into saying "we don't care about babies" then selling that statement and obviously false narrative to stupid voters. However, I don't think she understands that just because she's "smart" enough to come up with this cunning plan, that other people aren't smarter than that, and thus won't fall for it.

Netflix really missed the mark with this service by offering only mobile games are usually free-to-play anyway. It's not like these mobile games are the, quote on qqote, "good" ones, the standard is the same, so what exactly is the point. Netflix games don't include the microtransactions thier counterparts on the Play Store or Apple Store have, but because the timers, paywalls, grind and pay-to-win elements are so integral in these games, the games on Netflix often have those frustration elements remain without any way buy past them. The right thing to do would have been to re-design these games to work without those elements, but the just remove the payments and left the games as is. There's terrible.

I don't agree, but not because you can't reinvent the origin story. James Bond's origin story was originally established from a series of novels written by Ian Fleming back in the 50's. Ian Fleming died way back in 1964, and given that that aren't even as many 007/ James Bond books as there are movies now, James Bond's origin has been altered here and there a lot during the progresses of the movie series as an inevitability. Even Casino Royal, the first book published and the earliest one chronologically in James Bond's story, has been made into a movie twice. My issue is that the character can't be reinvented and still be James Bond no matter how flawed and archaic the character may be today. Let's face it, James Bond is a prick. An unapologetic misogynist who spends whatever time he has between bedding woman selfishly doing bloody work with little to no regard of the consequences of his actions whilst acting like it not only means nothing to him, but he's having a little too much fun doing it. Yes, more recent portrayals of Bond have seen it him humbled and humanized a little more with stronger, more independent woman at his side, but he's still Bond, so he's still a prick. If he's not a prick, he's not Bond, and that's actually fine with me. Romanticising being a spy with all the exaggeration and leaning into the alfa-male fantasy makes perfect sense. The changes a modern world would want to make to Bond to "modernise" the character would take away everything that makes him 007 in the first place. Regulars on the forum will know I'm not exactly a right-leaning traditionalist, but when it come to Bond I think he people should be allowed to appreciate the charm in the somewhat dated character rather than try to change him. Let's not take him too seriously, he sure as hell doesn't.

Tchia launches today, and it turns out it is NOT a PlayStation exclusive after all. It's only a console exclusive is is also on PC through Stem and EGS.

Sorry to go off topic, especially in a topic like this, but was a typo? Did you mean to say Destiny instead of HZD? Whether one likes the game or not calling HZD a looter shooter just doesn't make sense, especially when the other game in the discussion, Destiny, obviously is a looter shooter. Regardless, couldn't agree more on Lance. He has been taken from us way to soon. I haven't actually watched the John Wick movies ( I don't know why, they just sort of passed me by), but I'm keen to get caught up with them.

I don't get it, if they intend to use the licence in such a vague and loose manner, why even use the licence at all? What not do what Rare did when the lost licence to make 007 games after Goldeneye (On N64) and make a new Ip instead (In Rare's case, that was Perfect Dark). I know it's hard to stand out in the FPS market now and make a successful game with a new IP, for some reason established FPS franchises and licences are far more competitive, but this is just bound to alienate fans of the licence.

The actor, who is probably best known for his roles in the TV series The Wire and in the John Wick film franchise, passed away suddenly Friday morning from natural causes. He was 60 years old. Full story from Sky News. Personally, I will always best know his from his role as the self motivated antagonist from the Horizon franchise, Sylens, and I loved him in that role. He had such a unique presence and authority about him. A truly talented and brilliant performer taken from us way too soon and while at his peek. This is such a shame. RIP, Lance.

Whilst I agree on that with Uncharted, I don't when it comes to The Last of Us. Part II left an extension to Abby and Ellie's story wide open, so there is room, or perhaps even an obligation on Naughty Dog's part, to follow on and finish it. The only thing stopping them is the so-called fans who simply didn't get what the second game tried to do. I reviewed it on this very website and I know as well as anyone that there were problems with how it's story was told, but the game was still good and, at least for me, achieved it's goals in respect to what the player was supposed to feel.

Call me interested, but I need to know more about what's required. The last thing I want to do is offer up advice on health from a place whare I don't what what I'm talking about. That's more than simply stupid, that's potentially dangerous and I don't think that saying anything just to say something for the sake of points should be encouraged with something like this.

The (original) Intellivision was developed by Mattel and built to compete with the Atari 2600 and actually started development the same year as the Atari's release in 1977 to then be released in 1980 after being test marketed in 1979. There would be a revised model in 1983 called the Intellivision 2 with an upgraded CPU and a more compact design that was cheaper to make. Aside the slight technical upgrade, both were pretty much the same. Call it the comparable to the relationship between the PS4 and the PS4 Pro and you get the idea. It's a late 70's/early 80's video game system, so graphics and sound are pretty much what you expect, even though the Intellevision tended to have better graphics than the 2600. This is an image from Advance Dungeons and Dragons, one of the classic games from the system. But enough about the games, this is about the system. First, the controllers. As you can see they had numeric keypads with two buttons on each side and a disc at the bottom that rotates and also serves as a button when you press it in, kind of like how you might push the control stick on a modern game controller. So that's a total of 17 buttons. Compare that to a Dualshock 4, that has 14 buttons plus a D-Pad, and I'd say that seams a little excessive for the kind of games that they had back then. This was the early days of home console gaming, the the ergonomics f the controllers weren't great either when they really needed to be for a more complex controller. As was common in the 80's, the games often came with overlayers for the keypad to help indicate what buttons that game used and what thier functions were. Unlike the Atari 2600, the Intellevision was modular and had a number add-ons including the Intellevoice that, when used with a compatible game, added synthesized human voices to the game's audio, and ambitious thing for the time; And a keyboard component that tuned the Intellevision into a modular home computer. This keyboard component even had it's own 8-bit processor that worked with the hardware on the console, turning it into a dual-processor computer, so that was also pretty cool for the time. So this was a good system for its time, but like so many other systems at the time, the video game crash of 1983 hurt it badly. By the time it was discontinued in 1990, it had sold a bit over 3 millions units, which isn't bad for a system at the time, but doesn't look good compared to system it was meant to compete with, the Atari 2600, that sold around 10 times more. Coming out later than the Atari, having a smaller library of mostly clones of the same games and being around $100 (And that's $100 in 1980, remember.) more expensive meant it was never going to compete.