this is how i feel about hogwarts legacy. that game is only 3 years old. transphobes will say 'it has sold 5 million copies!' or whatever but i've never seen that game not being massively reduced in price. not that hard to sell x million copies when you've basically been giving it away for 3 years.
Gaming · Takes · page 2
Further down today’s ranking of Gaming posts that are opinions and questions: page 2 of 3.
Remedy games are nuts. They'll have a plot about existential horrors brought about through man's inhumanity to man, and then you'll just come across a side story where you have to track down a missing tin of beans with a Llama called 'Investigating Gregory.'
The vibecoded Red Alert 2 recomp doesn't show a cursor or seemingly register my mouse clicks on the main menu. Whatever. I'm really interested in trying out that completely modular controller, the Beitong Pangu. Unfortunately, the only controller with rear paddles that ReWASD supports for remapping is the Xbox Elite Series 2...and my Xbox Elite Series 2 controller hasn't been able to hold a charge for several years now. I'd love to get it repaired.
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I've never done ANYTHING competitively, games or otherwise. Thus, I don't really understand those controllers with 8,000 hertz polling rates and similar. On that note, will I have a better experience using a mouse with a high polling rate on a high refresh rate display? I'm using my Logitech MX Master 3 on my online PC, but given the out-of-support (on Windows) GPU that I have, my monitors are only running at 60 hertz right now. Still, given how I like many types of consumer electronics...and that the controller stick modules kinda look like mechanical keyboard switches, I find competitive controllers to at least, be a little bit interesting. I saw a YouTube video in my subscriptions comparing the latency wireless dongles across MayFlash, Brook, Gulikit, 8BitDo adapters, and similar. A DualSense Bridge on a Raspberry Pi Pico 2W was also featured in that video.
My review of Star Wars Galactic Racer so far: - it’s very good - looks stunning - feels fun - love that the solo campaign is basically a roguelike game - sadly it keeps crashing just like any other game in 2026 that you get on day one
Earlier today I discovered this game has an INCREDIBLE quality-of-life feature: you can choose to launch directly to your most recent save. No company / studio splash screens. No menus. You hit "Play" from Steam and within seconds you're right where you left off in-game. (Not sure if console versions also have this?) Now THAT is how to respect a player's time!
we add physical heft to games by making them heavier: plastic, wood, metal. are there other tricks, other physics we can leverage? e.g., game board with embedded magnets and pieces with embedded iron might have a satisfying physicality to it even without much actual weight.
Sorry Control's one my favourite games of all time like I could do a video essay on that game's story. Also maybe i was biased towards Dylan back in the first game but "scared kid who was taken in to be fixed by a government entity that said he was special then pushed him to a breaking point"
For various reasons I haven't been able to blitz through Silent Hill Townfall quite as fast as I did with Control Resonant. But I'm starting to get near the end and it's been fucking incredible Hard to believe we've had a whole modern trilogy of SH that's been this varied and good
Something I never noticed about Star Fox Adventures is Peppy and Slippy are on the cover art in a way that makes it look like they actively help you when in reality they're still on the Great Fox phoning in help from space Krystal's there too but at least you play as her in the intro
I have no idea about the wider lore of Mongil (I only know they made other monster collection games in this series years ago) but it's a bit surprising to see the "sword and board" fantasy settings (with a light Saturday morning cartoon humour) in Star Dive is now bunny girls and scifi?
Gears of War: E day is both a love letter to the original trilogy and a game the stand entirely on its own two feet The new gameplay mechanics are a massive improvement. The level design is bigger, without feeling too big. The story has you fully engaged from the start This is the one fans have
Rayearth 2026 really feels like a prettier version of Rayearth 1994 so far. When I started the 1994 version it felt so distinctly 90s that I wondered if that charm would carry over in the remake and it has so far.
This text from the videogame Bahamut Lagoon keeps resonating in my mind quite often, because many varied reasons and situations. Such a simple yet meaningful quote... and even more so if you know what happened with the person who worked that hard and passionately to have this game properly translated to english.
Well, I had a great time playing Spider-man: Miles Morales. Miles is a great character of course, and I like this take on the Tinkerer. It definitely felt WAY shorter than the first one (I thought I was only 1/2 done!. Also, though I never fast travel, I missed most of the side stories, I think?
"...game creation has historically been limited to a select group of people who have technical experience and knowledge of complex game engines." Yeah, how did they join that select group, I wonder? What process might have given them entry? I was making Joust clones in QBASIC and Duke3D maps of my house, maybe we shouldn't be casting this in terms of an unreachable elite.
I played through Timecrest fully once. I tried to do it again a couple times, but could never quite get into it. I think part of the problem is that the dialog comes in like someone sending me a bunch of messages in a row, which I hate. Just send me one message! Either way, I always deeply appreciated the full accessibility from the start and the ongoing efforts. I also reported a lot of grammatical errors which the creators replied to and fixed. It'll be sad for this game to be gone.
One of the things I realized in the Ongoing BG3 Conversation is that canon about how the companions act/feel/blah is even more necessarily ambiguous than in normal video games because you can also play them as origin characters, which puts them in a weird position that's not quite NPC or PC.
I couldn't care less about GTA VI, but I do find the inclusion of 170 species of animals impressive, and am certain they will serve the city well. kotaku.com/grand-theft-auto-6-…
A great game. Also one of the few times I was done dirty at RPS - wrote a glowing review, only for one of the old regulars to do a 'Second opinion: Nuh-uh it's bad' piece.
Finished Castlevania Nocturne last night and *surprise* it rules!! Ends on a definitive enough note that I’d be cool never getting more, but also… I *really* want this crew to do their take on Symphony of the Night at some point!
There's something pretty telling about vibecoding being used massively to "port" games and making terrible unmaintainable and buggy programs in the process. Something which would get publishers/devs universally criticized a few years ago.
I find Magic the Gathering's mechanics and design space fascinating, but I'm definitely relieved I've only ever enjoyed it from a distance, because I'm constantly hearing about some new fuckery on Hasbro's part
psyched that Dead of the Brain is almost out in English!! When I talk to non-VN people about the history of Japanese adventure games, part of it is always 'these things have been around for decades and decades, but we never got the PC-98 heyday stuff here'. Finally that history is unlocked 🎵
I don't believe there are any problems with modern AAA gaming that cannot be solved by firing everyone with an MBA into the sun. That'd actually solve a lot of other things, too.
anthropomorphic pokemon, as in, grabbing a regular ass quadruped pokemon and making it anthropomorphic, is still a novel concept to me i get to experience the uncanny valley again like i used to when i just came across furry culture 🔥
🐈⬛ microsoft charging full price for the switch 2 upgrade of minecraft bedrock (as a whole separate game download, not an upgrade pack) and only offering a "limited time promotion" for digital owners (no compensation for physical release owners) is a horrendously disgusting thing to even entertain doing and of course a very microsoft thing to do we are getting DANGEROUSLY close to voiding their "we don't charge for updates" claim because they're gating vibrant visuals and (assumedly) performance and stability improvements behind buying this 9 year old port again if you miss their """generous offer""" or have the game physically we literally have the whole upgrade pack thing going on, which is as elegant of a solution to the cross-gen switch game upgrade problem that nintendo are ever going to offer, or at the very least games like Deltarune offer one switch version of the game for free if you've ever bought the other
So what I didn't factor into this is that this franchise is the only thing keeping Autumm Games in business and that they are also tragically bad at business (these two things are related).
i have a theory that castlevania: belmont's curse is a switch 1 game and not a switch 2 game(it runs in 60fps on switch 2 apparently) because the game is only 4.2GB and the standard 64gb Switch 2 carts are prohibitively expensive to produce (and a game key card would have been met with fan pushback)
Mind that human translation has the exact same shortcoming. If you make a game and give the translator only a list of all the words and sentences in the game without ever showing them the actual game contents the translation will be awful. It's like trying to get a calculator to come up with the correct result with half of the values being ambiguous or unknown.
How have I only just found out about Jonathan Blow’s new game, Order of the Sinking Star, on the eve of its release?! I personally think that Braid and The Witness are two of the greatest games ever made, so I honestly can’t wait to play this on the Switch tomorrow! youtu.be/OIxuGF6CwnU
I really appreciate RenderScape's takes about the Reignited discourse on the TL. It has been so jarring seeing some wildly accusatory / inflammatory takes from others, (whom I assume (poorly) as OSRS players) I would repeat my takes but it's been so tiring :c
WHY DO I EVEN HAVE HERO POINTS. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
The underground research facilities and labs in FFVII remind me a lot of the ones from the Resident Evil series, and I wonder if it was a common artistic theme among Japanese artists and level designers.
The other one I'm getting a disproportionate amount of bang for buck from is Orbital Bullet. Simple 2D platformer shooter but it always feels like the right vibe to hump into that one.
Yeah, this is vital. Having the ability on BG3 to block out my own quests, add tags/hookups, and test in-engine on the fly was the only way to iterate at the speed we needed to. Obviously we had many talented designers for very complex implementation, but you had to at least know the engine.
The XOR and AND gates are making a LITTLE more sense, because now you've got a clearer "IF we passed in any of the other (valid) outputs then there's correct answers at the end, and we're just showing one possible route through" (give or take the fact that one input bit should presumably always be zero because it's your result bit in the output and passing in anything else screws up the answer!) I think that most of the puzzles are just lacking some clarifying context. You almost universally get all-0s as input so you're inherently skipping most of the paths. And without context then you don't know what it all means and why it's doing anything other than moving a colourful ball across the screen!
I want TTRPGs with interesting resolution mechanics that's more than just roll over a number to succeed I want resource allocation I want buttons to press I want an engine I want push your luck I want interesting choices
I didn’t love the ending of Control Resonant - mostly because the final boss might have been the easiest and least inspired of the whole game - but I loved the arc of Dylan Faden and where he was left off. Overall, I’m a massive, massive fan of that game, even if I wish that final fight…resonated.
It’s amazing how the #Warframe subreddit can melt down over the ask of having to coordinate with squad mates. I don’t blame DE in the least for being *very* cautious about the new 6 player mission.
it's really easy to get caught up in fe3h discourse even tho i am like aware of it but honestly none of the lords literally nuke millions of people bc they are literally compelled by a supernatural force imposed upon them by their childhood best friend to do everything in their power to survive
there have definitely been bigger turn arounds in gaming history but it's kinda crazy how like everything people criticized about KH2 has looped around to being a beloved thing they stopped doing reaction commands because people HATED them in KH2 back in the day
I love everything about this upcoming game Into The Wind (store.steampowered.com/app/2843060/...) so I am holding out hope that they absolutely do not ruin it by using genAI.
The "man and young girl" duo isn't a mandatory formula in game design. Gender and age combos should change based on the story. There’s no need to force a "little sister" trope every time. Every game has its own unique, perfect character balance. #GameDev #JRPGNarrative
Control is one of my favorite games of all time. I loved Alan Wake 2 and Quantum Break. I wanted to like Control Resonant so badly. But I find the fighting tedious, the level design confusing/frustrating, and the puzzles annoying - it's all such a slog 😢 The story is the only thing keeping me playing. Hope it gets better.
if there's one thing I could harp on forever, it's that, in the vast majority of cases, you are not trying to make players happy as a game designer. you are their adversary and they're going to try to beat you up. you can choose the punches you pull, but you've got to be a good antagonist to them
I'm unsleeving a ton of Florian cards from my RuneBox so I can put together Viserai. It's got me SO nostalgic for Rosetta...What an amazing set! Fun limited, gorgeous aesthetic, and 4 very cool heroes that all kinda broke the game in some way. I really loved that era of FAB (I love all eras of FAB)
The world's best boardgame is, according to the users of the Boardgame Geek web site, Brass Birmingham from 2018. You should play this excellent game. Here are two important rules. 1. Coal and other people's beer travel by canal or railway when you buy it. 2. Steel and your own beer teleport instantaneously to where you want it. #boardgames
I do wish developers would scrap roguelike game design. Take Star Wars Galactic Racer; regardless of how skillful you play, you are 100% guaranteed to fail the ~90 minute championship playtime for numerous attempts, until you a) unlock enough good buffs to use on future runs, and b) the RNG actually lets you use them. It's a lazy, artificial way to get more playtime from a game whilst ignoring difficulty balancing. It doesn't encourage you to get better and instead disrespects your time.
Glad to see these folks working on a union... but shouldn't it really be a "guild", considering?
Reminder, Resident Evil canon post remakes is a lot more loose and less concrete. So if Dead Aim doesn't harm anything in the 'mainline' games, there's no reason to exclude it from what you consider to be canon. (Same way I still favour the OG titles canon irrespective of what Requiem shows).
