TLOU2 controversy wasn’t because the unlikable character was a woman, it was because the writing was garbage. If the unlikable character was a man the reception would have been exactly the same.

Also, woman characters in games hasn’t been a risk since Metroid came out in 1986. It seems nowadays that the tables have turned and the vast majority of main characters in more than half of games from the past 5 years are women.

Honestly, I kinda wish it would come back. Forcing all manufacturers to use the same part for headlights had a singluar massive advatage that is gone now:

You could walk into any parts store and they always had the headlight you needed in stock, on the shelf.

Prices could be lowered dramatically as well because they were produced in such massive quantities. Sure, bulbs are more or less “cheap” now, but imagine being able to walk into any parts store and buy a pair of new LED headlights for your car for just $8 USD. You can’t do that now (at least not here in California, the cheapest LED pair for lows only is like $30 at AutoZone), but you could if manufacturers had to use the same light module. And this same process could apply to any variety of other automotive parts.

Despite the limitation of the law requiring certain modules, cars back then had their own unique styling. Just looking at them, you knew exactly what make and model it was, and sometimes even the exact year. Nowadays, with no such limitation, I find cars to be more or less the same boring blobs driving down the road with a similar silhouette and in a paint variety of black, white, or grey/silver. I have to really pay attention to the taillights if I want to identify the make/model/year.

No?

80-60k players is still incredibly successful. I don’t think Nightreign was ever expected to see those kinds of numbers given the nature of the game.

What does Square have to do with a Bandai Namco published game developed by FromSoftware?

Tuned Heart - PC-9801

Koudelka - PS1

Jean D’Arc - PSP

XCOM 2 - Steam

I really liked the art style, but for some reason a lot of recent games with that cell shaded style seem to think that they need to set the contrast to be negative and washout all the colors, which is almost the entire appeal of the art style. Zelda did it too, and I disliked it in that game too.

Shame it was called Marathon though. Game had absolutely nothing to do with Marathon, and didn’t even feature the Phor. Also shame it was a dead genre that the only people that like that genre play Tarkov and literally nothing else.

You don’t have to “bypass it.” When you install the game, during the settings process it asks if you would like to create a PS account and you just click no, or skip IDR what the word on the button was. Then it never asks you to do it again, but you can still link it in the options menu if you wanted to later on.

I mean, realistically its still Nintendo so I still won’t buy it. I disagree with their business practices ever since Iwata died. Nintendo has gone way downhill, and I don’t want to give them any of my money anymore. It sucks since I really like the old Zelda and Metroid games, but theyre only games. Its not the end of the world. Plus, emulation fixes Nintendos problems anyway.

Honestly, I don’t mind if Nintendo didn’t innovate. I have just wanted a “normal” console from them in a while like a return to their SNES/N64/GameCube days. When they still actually tried to remain competitive, and in the case of the SNES and N64, were technologically ahead of the competition. Sure there were some innovations, but in comparison to the Wii, Wii U, and Switch, their older consoles were more “normal” for their time.

Nowadays they just make underpowered hardware that only truly sells because its usually the cheapest console available and has the Nintendo logo on it. Except Switch 2, which started charging cutting edge tech prices for tech that was cutting edge like 10 years ago. All of the pricing of a better Switch without any of the real improvements except a newer processing unit and slightly bigger screen.

Give me a Switch without a screen. No battery. No detachable controllers. Just a brick that plugs into the wall and the TV, compatible with a Pro controller. Probably could even sell that at a reduced price too. Maybe even overclock it and give it a bigger cooling solution to get better performance. Maybe Nintendo’s newer games can actually run at a stable 60 fps on their own hardware finally.

Who wants to play a video game just to do work? That’s stupid.

Boots up Farming Simulator

I actually feel the opposite.

As an Elite Dangerous Enjoyer (I enjoy Star Citizen too, but SC is more “rule of cool” than “rule of real” than Elite) I appreciate the more or less “grounded in reality” setting that Bethesda created with Starfield. Most planets are giant, empty, desolate rocks or iceballs, which is exactly what one would expect from real life planets. And I suppose this may be a big reason why many people were disappointed. It seems that many expected the game to be “Star Wars Skyrim,” but Star Wars is very unrealistic with regards its planetary depcitions. Planets are varied and generally not shown to be mostly empty, desolate space rocks. Full world cities, jungles, magma, gas storms, etc. Likewise I more or less find the gameplay enjoyable, even with its annoyances (most of which are fixable with mods that are available right now).

However, I actually found myself very disappointed with the visual aesthetics of the game. When Bethesda marketed the game, they described it as “NASA-Punk.” But I suppose my disappointment comes from them failing to communicate what that meant to them, since it obviously meant something different to me.

When I first heard the term “NASA-Punk,” I became excited to see an abundant use of white and black, with copius amounts of shiny gold foil. I expected to see exposed mechanics and rocket piping. Basically, a mood board of NASA created technology from the beginning of NASA up until now. Ships inspired by the Lunar Landers, Lunar Rovers, etc. Bethesda on the other hand, seems to have created an aesthetic of “what would NASA look like 1000 years from now?” Since the two are so drastically different, you likely can imagine my disappointment at what I see as a weird, ugly aesthetic for many of the ship designer parts and space suits.

Xbox already supports mods. They have had mods support since like, 2015.

Then its gonna go right back to getting review bombed lol

If I don’t want to play the tutorial and I get absolutely blasted, then I gotta walk my sorry self back to the tutorial like the idiot I chose to be. I like to press all the buttons and figure stuff out on my own, its part of the exploration process.

I don’t hate when certain gameplay elements are forced, but when I am given that impression I expect the whole game to be like that. The tutorial in Dark Souls promised me the game wasn’t going to hold my hand the whole time by letting me completely skip the tutorial, and then it kept that promise. It didn’t hold my hand. And I think that was great. Meanwhile Call of Duty tutorials hold your hand the whole time, and then your hand keeps getting held for the whole game. Also good.

The tutorials I think are bad are ones that fail to properly communicate important features of the game. If I choose to skip that part it is no fault of the game.

For example, Helldivers 2, which I enjoy greatly, has a tutorial that fails to teach the player what the Galactic War means, anything about the various mission types, or especially how to deal with supply lines and reinforcement routes. What happens in the players spend a lot of time and effort doing the wrong thing expecting the right result, a result they can never achieve because the game never actually told them how to do it. There isn’t a bestiary where players can read about various enemies and their weak spots, you just have to trial and error figure it out, or have someone else that did that already tell you.

You cannot take a full unmodified Windows program and directly run it on the Xbox, even in Developer Mode. You have to make changes to the software for the Xbox to run it. Xbox runs a modified version of Windows, but it cannot run software built for the full unmodified version of Windows. I have no experience with developing for PlayStation, but I imagine it is the same, it probably does not run unmodified BSD software. Likewise, Nintendo software needs to be modified in order to run on Nintendo console operating systems. The Switch cannot run unmodified Android software, unless you hack it to install unmodified Android onto the console.

But you CAN take a full unmodified Linux program and directly run it on the Steam Deck, without needing to modify the software at all. Same with the Atari VCS.

Goalposts were not moved. The Steam Deck is a Linux laptop with a controller attached to it, its not a game console.

But the Steam Deck isn’t a console? And a game running through a compatibility layer isn’t a port.

A Linux laptop with a controller instead of a keyboard isn’t a console. Thats similar to the Atari VCS, which isnt a console either, just a Linux PC that comes with controllers. Both can run unmodified or barely modified Linux software, which a game console would require ports of.

Not sure about adaptation, but all of their games have atrocious performance problems. Bloober is like, the King of Stuttering. Definitely doesn’t help that they use Unreal now, but even when they released Layers of Fear and _observer, the performance of their games have always been bad.

Nintendo made a very smart business move that is extremely anti-consumer:

They removed themselves from competing with Sony and Microsoft.

People don’t think “Should I buy Xbox, Nintendo, or PlayStation?” They think “Should I buy Xbox or PlayStation, in addition to Nintendo?”

Great business move, because consumers are buying Nintendo up more than before. Extremely bad for consumers because now we are seeing how Sony acts when they have only one real competitor: keeping console exclusives, raising prices, and enforcing PS Accounts for offlline singleplayer games.

If Microsoft drops Xbox hardware, PlayStation will have zero competition and gain a monopoly on the console hardware market. Then they can raise the prices to be whatever they want. What are you gonna do, buy an Xbox that doesn’t exist?

Z-up is really only common among architectural or engineering type software. CAD and other types of software, for example.

Y-up is common among basically all other types of software. DirectX API is Y-up, for example. Which means anything that interacts with DirectX that has Z-up needs to convert the axes first before doing its calculation (a literal nothing cost microoptimization, but could be big depending on the software and platform).

It’s probably fine to leave as is in the long run, but its just annoying to me that I need to convert between the axes in Blender export settings, and would be more convenient if all the software I use used the same system, which is now Y-up. Blender is literally the only one. Honestly, I agree that it should be a user setting in Preferences, but I dont know if Blender is programmed to handle this or if it would need to be entirely rewritten.

I sure hope Blender does this soon. Very annoying workflow using it with Y-up software.