Anecdote alert: I mean, I went to Mint thinking this to be true. The first release I tried didn’t even support my (years old) WiFi drivers, and then the second couldn’t run levels in Hitman. (Bazzite did, however, so distro apparently matters)

I used to enjoy Gmod/SFM animations, but that content naturally takes months of work for people to put out. That was okay because there were dozens of amateurs always releasing their own things; but now, the trend is for weekly or even more frequent videos, which means animators need to rush to put out trendy 8 second shorts, switch to low-effort mediums like Let’s Plays, or just stop getting visitors entirely.

Every so often, I find a great animator that’s sitting in the last category getting their detailed animations quashed, and I get to see the 3 videos they’ve put out in the last 5 months; still wish YouTube could put them in my recommendations.

At this point what would make the most sense is an “Xbox Series Z” for people that want higher-performing games. I just don’t see thousands of people buying another $600 console for like 5 games, when most will continue to support the Xbox One. (Yes, Xbox One - most games on the front page of their store still support their old console)

Hard to say what’s the absolute best one, but some highlights:

Finale of Ace Attorney Justice for All; when you finally have the change in circumstances needed to pin the real killer and send them into a genuine panic.

Pizza Tower, final boss third phase: When Peppino sees that Pizza Face is sending him a Boss Rush, and flips his shit, annihilating each boss at lightning speed.

Ghost Trick, Phantom Detective: The final “4 minutes before death”, and multiple last revelations

Most of these are memories of story-driven moments nailed in by very solid soundtracks, which has very much convinced me how important music is to these games.

That’s the thing, I was careful about my wording; “if their only intention is to step up to a higher object”. If I tell someone to get on top of a cement block, their impulse won’t be to do a parkour jump where they’re tucking their legs, they’ll likely use their hands to lift themselves up. They wouldn’t even think of their action as a “jump”. When people press the spacebar in a video game, the intent is clearly to get higher onto the thing in front of them, it’s just most games choose not to express the particular actions a human does to do that (much like how we dropped Tomb Raider’s approach of manually holding a button to grab onto ledges)

In DRG, the way they differentiate intention is with the direction you’re looking - you can only mantle onto platforms you’re looking towards. So, you wouldn’t get many occasions where you’re dodging sideways and accidentally get on a platform.

In DOOM Eternal, they got rid of crouch, and put the grenade launcher on there. G was changed to toggle between your two grenade types. In Deep Rock Galactic, Ctrl uses the player’s laser pointer, a tool for communicating to teammates that doesn’t really impact gameplay. Having a free keybind offers a number of ways to enhance or simplify the game; if they wanted to go for simple measures, it could be a context-sensitive VO button, like spotting out enemy players.

That image doesn’t even have the full sentence.

You and I might do it as a connected reflex between the space key and ctrl key to always get a higher chance of reaching a ledge with no drawbacks, but it makes no digetic sense. People in real life don’t do a squat mid-air if their only intention is to step up to a higher object.

FPSes of both the realistic and cartoony variety have been introducing step-ups as a way to simplify movement for a long time. Examples: DOOM 2016, Deep Rock Galactic. It also means that they can connect other important game functionality to the Crouch button if that keybind just doesn’t do much for the intended gameplay.

We see a lot of the gold of indies rising above the crowd, but there’s still lots of indie studios failing. Think of one of your favorite indies, and try checking to see if they’ve made a second game - many don’t even get that far.

Minority opinion, I think there’s a lot they could do for Team Fortress 3.

• Reset expectations on cosmetics to reduce flaming ghost hats
• Invent female versions of each merc and a new character/voice for Soldier’s deceased actor
• Add an unobtrusive mantling system to replace crouch jumping
• Console crossplay
• Simplify weapons by making Flare gun and Sandwich defaults for respective classes
• Retool matchmaking system

I don’t remember there being any textual dialog in the game except for a few portions of the manual, so I’m not sure what you mean with the central temple. Its main activation comes from both towers, and as someone said, the first simply requires a short trip through a forest and beating a large guard; but the second requires a VERY long path.

A very light one, but “Gotta have it all” attitudes in video games.

I too, remember the Gamecube days when the console didn’t connect to the internet, and if there was anything to unlock in the game, it came from hitting buttons really well. We’re now in the days where the glittery, shiny purple armor (with the same armor stat) sometimes costs money. And yeah, quite often it’s more money than I’d say it’s worth.

I guess I just don’t get the people who still get a bunch of “cool” things in the game, but still feel angsty and frustrated because they don’t have everything - because they haven’t completely cleared their minimap of every objective, gotten a platinum achievement, or grabbed that one pointless thingy that only shows up through RNG.

I tend to experience a “majority” of games that I enjoy, and that already is enough to absorb a lot of my time. For games that have DLC content, I might buy one or two skins I like, and still spend less in total, inflation-adjusted, than I would on one disc back on my gamecube.

I’ve had this struggle when writing a story, and writing racist villains; because to do so, you DO need to understand the broken logic in their minds, that still allows them to look sane for most of their lives.

They’re working off of patterns they’ve seen at various points, as well as learned wisdom from some people they’ve depended on and trusted.

In my day, there are people/movements that I hate, and I’d say very rightly so. I imagine the same things that make me feel that’s a “righteous/vengeful” hate look the same in their minds.

Valve used to do ARGs for some of their major releases. It’ll be kinda sad if there’s just not enough energy around for people to figure out their puzzle pieces here.

I’m pretty sure even if the Steam store doesn’t do it, there are tools to search Steam that can exclude tags, right?

Seems like for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle it will be under half a year.

ah yes, port the billion dollar decades old high-fidelity engine that carefully manages memory to java, a language minecraft struggled to break free from to achieve any meaningful performance or mobile porting options. thank you, no one thought of that before.

Glad to see that strikes are having an effect.

Game bundles like from Fanatical are a good start. You can’t return them if you have issues, but they’re great if you haven’t played any of the offerings given.

A similar thing would be Xbox Game Pass, but that very much locks you into their ecosystem, and they’re clearly done investing into worthwhile games.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth looks really good. I can’t wait until it’s done so I can play it.

Previously, I had mused over vague ideas about whether blockchain technologies could go into a “proof of real person” system, by one-way-hashing information used to verify only basic details about a person. Eg: They exist, are a unique person, and are over a certain age. Ideally, it could be set up in a way that cannot easily correlate them between company databases.

That said, no real need to poke holes in the idea, because…that was the easy part, and it will probably never happen (or be far more draconian than I describe)