Coelacanth
@Coelacanth@feddit.nu
- Comment on Disco Elysium - The Final Cut is free to claim on epic games for the next 24h 3 hours ago:
The game was made by communists, and they do make fun of themselves and other communists a lot and try to be even handed with the satire. That being said, if you’ve completed all four political vision quests you do notice how pro-communist the authors are. I always recommend people do the communist path on their first playthrough, because it is the political quest that injects a necessary piece of hope into the game. It feels almost like the “canon” choice considering how well it balances out certain other elements of the story.
Communist vision quest spoilers
Not only do you have some gorgeous lines in the book club about their motivations, like: > “I guess you could say we believe it because it’s impossible.” He looks at the scattered matchboxes on the ground. “It’s our way of saying we refuse to accept that the world has to remain… like this…” But then the scene also ends with irrefutable proof that infra-materialism works. You build the impossible tower, and it holds. Which is of course a heavy handed metaphor: “the idea of communism can change the world if you believe in it”.
- Comment on Does Lemmy need a fork or a rewrite due to its maintainers views? 1 day ago:
Mbin is just kinda weird. I guess there aren’t too many people who are after a Reddit-like that also care too much about microblogging. Or maybe they do but the microblogging part of Mbin is just an inferior experience to Bluesky or Mastodon anyway? Or maybe people just dislike having to call shitposts in meme communities “articles” in “magazines”?
- Comment on Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage 4 days ago:
People didn’t call Dave the Diver an indie game. The Game Awards nominated it in that category, and rightly got a lot of shit for it.
Indie is a fraught and vague term in whatever genre of culture it gets applied to. During the early 00s indie music era you had tons of mass produced “indie rock” pushed out by big labels too.
Everyone kind of knows what it’s supposed to mean: small budget, small crew, independent of the major commercial publishers/labels/whatever. But there will always be edge cases in both directions.
- Comment on Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage 5 days ago:
I agree with your take. The definition of what an “indie” is is very vague and subjective, but given the budget and resources and circumstances of E33’s development it seems outside the scope of what seems to be the “spirit of the award”.
Blue Prince should have gotten the award to begin with.
- Comment on Steam winter sale is live. What patient games are you picking up? 5 days ago:
Is Seance of Blake Manor the first Blue Prince-like? I’m very hyped about it too but I’m still waiting for more than -25% off. Let me know how you like it, Blue Prince was my GOTY so another game to scratch that itch is enticing.
- Comment on Almost 30 years later, Fallout 1's depth of choice, chance, and consequence is still an RPG gold standard 5 days ago:
No idea, but probably? Might have to do some wine fuckery but on the surface it doesn’t look like the sort of thing that should be impossible on Linux.
- Comment on Steam winter sale is live. What patient games are you picking up? 6 days ago:
Got it for free too on Epic and was super surprised by it. Solid game indeed.
- Comment on Steam winter sale is live. What patient games are you picking up? 6 days ago:
My plan to work on my backlog this fall has utterly failed. Instead I’ve not been playing any games at all for the past month and a half, instead just working on a mod for STALKER Anomaly. Consequently I know in my heart of hearts that the right thing to do is not spend any money this sale. However, I am still looking at:
Tails of Iron (-92%)
The Banner Saga (-85%)
Bloodstained: Ritual of Night (-75%)
Virgo Versus The Zodiac (-75%)
Road 96 (-75%)
HYPER DEMON (-75%)
INMOST (-70%)
Trepang2 (-66% - if it was any lower I would just snap it)
- Comment on Steam winter sale is live. What patient games are you picking up? 6 days ago:
I played Mandragora this summer. Liked it quite a bit. It’s not going to change your whole world but it’s a solid Soulslike Metroidvania. Compared to other entries in the genre it’s extremely light on platforming (which for me was a plus), so keep that in mind if you play these kind of games for the precision platforming. The platforming is there as part of the level design and traversal, but don’t expect to be challenged with long sequences of difficult platforming if that’s what you’re after.
Otherwise it’s a lot of fun, the PoE-inspired skill tree is great and lets you do some fun multiclassing by moving over to adjacent skill trees to find combos and synergies. Some of the spellcasting classes can be pretty broken though, so keep that in mind if you don’t want to make the game a cakewalk. Chaos magic in particular was pretty busted, at least when I played.
Exploration is good, it’s exactly what you’d expect from a Metroidvania: new stuff opens up in old areas when you unlock new traversal abilities. Also the game is very pretty to look at.
- Comment on What is the best way to support Lemmy specifically and the Fediverse in general financially? 6 days ago:
Point me to the point in the code where this fact has come up. References to specific lines would be ideal.
- Comment on Almost 30 years later, Fallout 1's depth of choice, chance, and consequence is still an RPG gold standard 1 week ago:
2 is significantly better imo mechanically, and if you throw a handful of mods on top of that I think it just plays really well in general.
Apart from the beginning. I love FO2, but fuck the temple of trials and the first couple of hours.
- Comment on Almost 30 years later, Fallout 1's depth of choice, chance, and consequence is still an RPG gold standard 1 week ago:
Allow me to introduce: Fallout-1-in-2
- Comment on The USA and Europe are now enemies 1 week ago:
I am reminded of the line from Tom Waits’ great song Road To Peace:
Once Kissinger said
we have no friends
America only has “interests”
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 1 week ago:
AW2 is worth it. Don’t deprive yourself of the experience, it’s a memorable one. I understand the hoops though, but trust me it’s worth holding your nose and getting an Epic account. It’s still to this day my one and only purchase on Epic, and I don’t regret it one bit.
All that makes sense with Disco Elysium. Also I’m sorry about your eye, that must be an awful thing to go through. Very understandable with the eye fatigue and reading though. There is a lot of it, even after the voice acting update.
As far as heavy themes and all, I can’t say much without spoiling stuff but I will say this: the game somehow does strike a strange kind of balance where it ends up feeling oddly hopeful, even in the face of nihilism. It slightly depends on how you play it, granted. The Communism playthrough for example is a lot more hopeful than the Fascism run (although the latter is also very interesting and doesn’t play out the way you’d think).
I struggle with depression and self loathing and being unable to move on from the past and have struggled with addiction in the past, and Disco Elysium is one of the most cathartic experiences I’ve had in any medium of culture.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 2 weeks ago:
I think you’re spot on about Alan Wake, it has a cool story and some good ideas but feels pretty clunky to play. The sameness of the levels doesn’t help, either. American Nightmare plays well if you can overlook the low budget of being an Xbox Live Marketplace game. Plus it has some cool manuscript pages and lore elements and Ilka Villi absolutely slays as Mr Scratch in the FMV clips. Very interested to hear your thoughts on AW2. For me it’s by far the best game Remedy ever made, and probably in my all-time top 3.
Shame you’re not clocking with Hellblade, it’s a game I really enjoyed but it does have its shortcomings. For me all the elements kind of worked, and even though the puzzle mechanics weren’t amazing I allowed the game to be carried by the concept pretty far. The whole “seeing patterns where there are none in reality” being another manifestation of psychosis was neat. Also if you do want to finish it, the game is very short so there is probably less of it left than you think if you want to push through. I did personally like the ending, but maybe not worth it if it’s not clicking.
What made you bounce off Disco Elysium before? I agree with you that it’s probably the best game of all time, but I also do see people bounce off it frequently. Always interested in hearing people’s thoughts on it.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 2 weeks ago:
The hard lock is particularly egregious I agree. I also dislike moon logic but I chalk that up to “those were the times” as well. Back in those days strategy guides and phone-based help lines for adventure/puzzle games were common and making games inscrutable and puzzles impossibly idiotic were seen as a value-add to extend playtime on your purchase.
As far as the humour, one thing that stood out to me (besides the multitude of variously juvenile sex jokes) was that there was a little bit of a mean-spirited streak in the writing. At the end of the day Larry is not a bad or evil guy, he is a native loser. And a large part of the game is kind of making fun of him for that, and something about that doesn’t sit right with me.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 2 weeks ago:
I also played Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded I think last year or the year before and have similar thoughts. I know it’s a famous title/franchise and I wanted to check it out, and it was pretty much what I expected. I really hated the forced gambling-via-savescumming but it was otherwise an alright point and click puzzler with hit-or-miss humour.
I have half an idea of playing Love For Sail too at some point as that’s supposedly the series high point, but it’s not exactly a high priority.
- Comment on "Defeat the Backlog!" community 2 weeks ago:
Is there a sister community for people who keep buying games and still keep playing the same old games as always regardless? Definitely asking for a friend, absolutely haven’t spent another month on STALKER Anomaly instead of working on the backlog. No sir.
- Comment on 'Huge respect to the folks at Obsidian': Todd Howard invited Obsidian devs onto Fallout season 2's set so they could see New Vegas in the flesh 3 weeks ago:
I mean, I love NV and think it’s by far the best 3D Fallout, but it’s also got a ton of performance and bug issues. Partly due to the engine they were working with and the insane development cycle, but still. The game isn’t without issues. It’s famously unstable and buggy if played without mods. I also think it needs mentioning that a lot of the assets look out of place, because they are. The game had such a short development cycle that a lot of them are just reused FO3 assets.
I love it, but there is a reason so many people recommend something like the Viva New Vegas modlist even for a first playthrough.
- Comment on 'Huge respect to the folks at Obsidian': Todd Howard invited Obsidian devs onto Fallout season 2's set so they could see New Vegas in the flesh 3 weeks ago:
I have seen debates of both 3 and 4 over New Vegas. These arguments tend to come almost exclusively from newer fans. Anyone who played 1 and 2 first, especially back in the day, tends to have a much less favourable view of the Bethesda Fallouts. But there are tons of Bethesda-first fans who came into Fallout after first playing Skyrim, typically. The 4 fans either love the base building or tend to think the other games are “too old looking/feeling”. The 3 fans… I don’t even know, that game is pretty terrible I think. But they tend to argue the design of the world in 3 is better to explore than New Vegas.
I haven’t personally heard anyone argue 76 is the best Fallout, but I’m sure someone is out there.
- Comment on The best games of 2025, picked by NPR's staff 3 weeks ago:
I forgot about those because I never played them myself and honestly this year has been awash with so many good releases that they kind of slipped my mind. But you’re absolutely right!
- Comment on The best games of 2025, picked by NPR's staff 3 weeks ago:
Interesting that they didn’t include Ninja Gaiden 4 in an otherwise incredibly exhaustive list, but apart from that I think this is as close to “every notable 2025 release, summarised and collected” as you’re going to get.
- Comment on steam vs gog, which game store to buy from? 3 weeks ago:
F.E.A.R. was eventually fixed. I’m pretty sure only the multiplayer.exe. still has DRM. I played it recently including the expansion and it was just fine.
- Comment on steam vs gog, which game store to buy from? 3 weeks ago:
The only black-and-white rule is: if you’re buying an older game you should always buy it on GOG. No exceptions. There’s too many retro games on Steam that won’t even launch on modern machines, and beyond that GOG is typically very good at including fan made patches and fixes into their versions of old games, ensuring older games actually work and are just plug-and-play.
- Comment on Best vertical games on Android? 3 weeks ago:
I haven’t played it in a million years but I remember Cut The Rope being really fun.
- Comment on It's been a while, which Lemmy instances should I be on? 4 weeks ago:
Browsing /subscribed only is definitely the way.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 4 weeks ago:
I’ve honestly mostly been vibe coding my changes to STALKER Anomaly mod TALKER and writing more backstories and personalities for it. It’s been fun, although frustrating at times.
I have played some Chaos Zero Nightmare on my phone. The game is fun, I just kind of wish it wasn’t a gacha mobile game. Also wish the character designs were a little less ridiculous, most are acceptable but some are playing to sexuality way too much making me just roll my eyes. All the usual trappings of daily energy and menial tasks to grind out to progress and level up your characters also feel extra annoying and needlessly time-wasting when the main gameplay is so good.
The actual roguelike deckbuilder gameplay is surprisingly good, though, and so far has kept me interested. The variety and versatility of builds is a lot of fun, with lots of specific or extra-rare upgraded versions of cards unlocking niche strategies and combos and stuff like that. Balance seems surprisingly good despite being a gacha and with the right builds you can make pretty much any character you like shine.
Also the story has a fast forward button that is almost like a skip, which is great because the writing is terrible and the translation is awful. But I’m not really here for that, so I don’t really care as long as I’m not forced to engage with it.
- Comment on What game is a guilty pleasure of yours? 4 weeks ago:
Does the story actually get good? I tried it out around launch but when they introduced a knockoff Paimon I noped out. I was there for a dark post-apocalypse story, not Sunday morning cartoon. Not that there is anything wrong with it but just not for me. I felt a little mislead.
- Comment on What game is a guilty pleasure of yours? 4 weeks ago:
Recently it’s been Chaos Zero Nightmare on my phone. Yeah, it’s a gacha. Yeah it has some absolutely ridiculous gooneriffic character designs that makes me roll my eyes. Yeah it’s poorly translated and the story is garbage.
But you know what? The actual roguelike deckbuilder game mode is actually a ton of fun. The characters are well balanced enough that I’ve never felt like I was behind on power even with comparably “bad” pulls from the gacha. The game has been generous enough anyway that I have a lot of pulls saved up too. And the mutability and variety in the roguelike mode is just amazing. Tons of combos, tons of variations of every card and tons of opportunities to make niche builds work just because you happened to get one specific rare upgrade variation on one specific card while also stumbling upon one specific neutral card to add to your deck and stuff like that.
And all for the price of free? I can’t complain.
- Comment on What is your favorite Metroidvania? 4 weeks ago:
It is… kind of. Hence the half-cheat. First off it’s 3D, but the game is completely centered around the Oldest House, which is the headquarters of the fictional FBC. Like a Metroidvania you explore and backtrack back and forth through it and unlock new areas opening up from previous places. There is also one (although only one) proper ability gate that lets you explore previously unreachable parts of earlier areas once unlocked.
Even if you don’t classify it as a true Metroidvania it’s definitely Metroidvania-inspired.