redhorsejacket
@redhorsejacket@lemmy.world
- Submitted 1 week ago to games@lemmy.world | 4 comments
- Comment on First Impressions: Heroes of Might and Magic: The Olden Era is an excellent franchise revival, with an unfortunate art style that belies its quality. 2 weeks ago:
I checked out their FAQ, and it seems like the HoMM3 version of the fheroes2 project (or maybe vice versa, I’m not sure which came first).
I noticed that one of the features of VCMI was a totally reworked AI. Do you have insight into how that feels vs base game AI? A minor concern I have about these sort of fan projects is that the contributors tend to be among the most passionate and knowledgeable fans of the base game around, and their tweaks are balanced around that level of game knowledge.
- Comment on First Impressions: Heroes of Might and Magic: The Olden Era is an excellent franchise revival, with an unfortunate art style that belies its quality. 2 weeks ago:
I agree. That’s why I felt compelled to write this post. The gameplay is far better than its wrapper makes it appear.
- Comment on First Impressions: Heroes of Might and Magic: The Olden Era is an excellent franchise revival, with an unfortunate art style that belies its quality. 2 weeks ago:
Was Xeen the M&M setting with the explicit science-fantasy inclination? I’ve never played any of the straight RPGs, but I’ve trundled through enough wikis to discover some bonkers concepts in those games. Like, one ends with your party fighting through a dungeon only to discover that the dungeon is actually a buried space ship or something like that?
- Comment on First Impressions: Heroes of Might and Magic: The Olden Era is an excellent franchise revival, with an unfortunate art style that belies its quality. 2 weeks ago:
I am certain that I would love HoMM3, but it’s just one of those games that I’ve never gotten around to sampling. As a kid, it was purely an access thing, but, as an adult, it’s a case of wanting that sweet nostalgia sauce drizzled over the meat and potatoes HoMM gameplay. Therefore, when the SRPG urge strikes, I find myself reaching for 2. I’ve heard nothing but good things about 3 though, so perhaps it’s high time to advance a little. Besides, I can only betray Roland for that sweet Archibussy so many times before it gets a little old.
My reservations about the art style aside, I think fans of the series would do well to check out the demo. I don’t pretend to be an expert, but, the price is right, and the gameplay feels very solid to me.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to games@lemmy.world | 14 comments
- Comment on Last Epoch players turn on the action RPG for announcing a paid DLC class, tanking its Steam reviews: 'go play Path of Exile instead' 5 weeks ago:
Mmos and arpgs are intrinsically linked by their gameplay loops. Admittedly, this can vary to a greater or lesser degree depending on the specific games being compared, but Diablo 2 was, in many ways, proto-WoW.
- Comment on AI Slop Recipes Are Taking Over the Internet — And Thanksgiving Dinner | Food bloggers see traffic dip as home cooks turn to AI, inspired by impossible pictures 1 month ago:
Wandering through to mention that your local library almost certainly has a collection of cookbooks spanning decades, and, depending on your area, might even have stuff tied specifically to your region. Take the book, photocopy the recipes you’re interested in, return it, get to cooking!
- Comment on An Update on Cities: Skylines II - Development moved to Iceflake Studios 1 month ago:
After VtM 1’s tumultuous release, not to mention the drama surrounding the sequel’s development, that makes sense to me.
That being said, I don’t think it’s quite as big a leap as the person above is making it sound. To use their words, The Chinese Room are known for “strong art direction, atmosphere, and story, [and] weak gameplay”. They also suggest that the games TCR make are “the exact opposite” of Bloodlines 1. Which is kinda boggling my mind, cause I’m pretty sure the critical and user consensus of that game is that it excelled in its art direction, atmosphere, and story, and fell comparatively short in its gameplay. In fairness, I think he was referring to the limited open world nature of VtM 1 vs the straight linearity of the “walking sim” genre, but still. I’d argue the most memorable section of VtM is the Ocean House Hotel, which is, basically, a linear walking sim level, and it’s not as though the og game did a ton with its open world.
Now there’s an argument to be made that Paradox made the wrong call by doubling down on the peripheral elements of the game, rather than hiring a team that has ARPG gameplay bonafides, but I think that’s only an argument that can be made with the benefit of hindsight. Additionally, is it true that the gameplay/combat of VtM2 is glaringly bad? I can’t speak for myself, but the handful of reviews I read characterize it as serviceable at worst. Which, again, seems right in line with the first game.
I’m very much on the outside looking in though.
- Comment on Cities: Skylines upheaval: Developer and publisher announce “mutual” breakup 1 month ago:
Apropos of nothing more than my idle speculation, I’d guess they will return to the transport tycoon genre if they are able to do so. Before Skylines took the crown from SimCity as the preeminent example of the genre, they made the Cities in Motion games, which were narrowly focused on improving the mass transit of existing cities (as opposed to building the city itself). I know the second CiM game had some interaction between the city and your efforts as transportation czar (in the same way you could indirectly influence a citiy’s development in, say Railroad Tycoon), but the emphasis was always on transit. I imagine the newly independent team will want to keep their focus narrow, unless another publisher swoops in to replace the safety net.
- Comment on Refrigerator ads are finally here! 1 month ago:
Yeah, I figured that’s almost assuredly the case on a forum like Lemmy (or Reddit prior to the Exodus) but I don’t know whether it can be extrapolated to the public at large. I’m practically a Luddite compared to many folks around here, but I’m possibly the most advanced computer user among my peers simply because I know a couple Win key shortcuts and I’ve used powershell before (with no comprehension of what I was doing, to be clear).
- Comment on Refrigerator ads are finally here! 1 month ago:
Could be I’m the minority here, but touchscreens stopped feeling like a value add years ago. Somehow I’ve wrapped back around to a good button or knob being the marker of quality. One of the reasons I chose my current vehicle was because they let the most common controls (climate, radio, etc) stay tactile.
- Comment on I Wrote Task Manager — 30 Years Later, the Secrets You Never Knew 1 month ago:
Sorry man, I’m not knowledgeable enough about computers to provide a summary, but I’ll mention this fun tidbit: apparently, the shipped version of task manager contained thus guy’s home phone number in the code by accident. He commented it out, but left the phone number in there, which means he can find instances of the source code being hosted online by reverse searching his home phone. Which is still a number he maintains, and he asks people not to call. Which is a bold thing to leave in the video, but I guess he’s not terribly concerned about it going viral.
- Comment on Anyone using the "new" VCS? 1 month ago:
Ah I see, I misunderstood how you were applying the terms. My bad. I suppose I don’t typically talk about consoles or games independently of the experience that they offer, so whether it’s a new product with a vintage inspiration, or something vintage all the way through, I’d think of both products as retro, because, to me, they are both offering an experience reminiscent of an earlier era. I understand that’s an incredibly subjective experience though, and your take is probably more factually correct.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
Tyl what til means!
- Comment on Anyone using the "new" VCS? 1 month ago:
Okay, I’ll bite.
My brother and I routinely dig out our old N64 when we go home for the holidays and enjoy an afternoon of retro gaming. In your opinion, I am using this incorrectly, because I’m actually vintage gaming, since I am using original hardware and software to do it (if I understand your assertion correctly).
But, our specific purpose in using that original hardware is to, as you say, “[relate] to the past, past times, or the way things were”. We engage in this ritual as an homage to when we were kids and getting a new game for Christmas was one of the highlights of the first quarter of the year. So, I argue our use case meets your definition of retro as well vintage, and that you’ve invented a false binary where none actually exists.
- Comment on I finished all (current) main quest content for Death Trash 1 month ago:
Man, if they aren’t putting “It’s David Cronenberg’s Kenshi, more or less” on the metaphorical box, they’re making a mistake.
- Comment on For those of you who enjoy open-world games, how big of a world is too big? 2 months ago:
Are you insane, or have you achieved CHIM?
Not that there’s an appreciable difference…looking at you, Michael Kirkbride.
- Comment on What's your favorite case of a game making fun of you? 2 months ago:
Try these cool moves, like, playing the game!
- Comment on [UnReal World] has been in continual development for 33 years, and its creator doesn't think he'll ever stop updating it: 'When I accomplish one feature, I always have two more waiting' 2 months ago:
…God I miss forum-based let’s plays. I was never a SA member (Something Awful, not Sturmabteilung, though there’s probably some degree of overlap there), but I did browse the lparchive website once upon a time. Some folks put so much effort into their presentation, I want sure where the game ended and the LP narrative began.
There was one in particular that was an LP of the Blade Runner adventure game. That’s a game I had watched my dad play on our family Compaq back in the day, so I thought I knew what I was getting into, but the combination of the game having secret narrative branches (that change based on a random seed when you start a new game, I think) and the posts being written in a first person, hard-boiled noir style, made me think that we had played different games.
- Comment on "The King" (Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon) 2 months ago:
For sure! You’ve convinced me to give it another look after unfairly writing it off. It sounds much more interesting than I originally anticipated.
- Comment on "The King" (Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon) 2 months ago:
Could be that I’m a product of a country which produced Kevin Costner as Robin Hood, and therefore don’t have the best grip on the culture cross the pond, but I feel like suggesting “Arthurian”=“Irish” might get you in trouble in certain pubs.
- Comment on "The King" (Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon) 2 months ago:
Interesting. I remember taking a look at the previous game from a couple of years ago because, in spite of myself, edgelord dark fantasy is still appealing to me if it’s done knowingly (which is different, I’ll hasten to add, from not taking it seriously). However, one glance at the screenshots told me it was a deck-building game and I immediately disregarded it. It’s just not a mechanic or loop that I enjoy.
However, given that this appears to be to Skyrim what, say, The Outer Worlds is to Starfield (narrative tone notwithstanding), my interest is piqued.
Are you enjoying the game?
- Comment on 'Points, clicks, and misery' - Civvie11 plays I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream 2 months ago:
Love me some Goth Gamer Nation, but the other creator is unknown to me. Always happy to find another creator though, thanks for the recommendation.
- Comment on Krafton is now an 'AI-first company,' will spend $70 million on a GPU cluster to 'serve as the foundation for accelerating the implementation of agentic AI' 2 months ago:
I mean, that’s the goal of all of these AI companies. If you peruse any marketing material for Google, Microsoft, ChatGPT, Grok, etc. they almost all mention the “agentic capabilities” of their flavor of spyware.
Personally, an AI model which is capable of doing tasks like this would actually interest me. However, no organization (for profit or otherwise) is trustworthy enough to have access to all of the data on me that it would take to make an agentic AI actually useful, so, for me, it would have to be something I run locally. However, rather than invest all of the time, effort, and money into learning how to make that happen, I think I’ll just call the damn dealership and schedule an appointment. I may suffer from terminally online brain rot, but I’m not so paralyzed by human interaction I can’t make the occasional phone call.
- Comment on Krafton is now an 'AI-first company,' will spend $70 million on a GPU cluster to 'serve as the foundation for accelerating the implementation of agentic AI' 2 months ago:
AgenTic, not Agenic. As in, an AI that acts as your agent. Meaning, the goal would be to have an AI model that you could direct to perform certain tasks in the background while you focus on other things.
For example, youre in the middle of doing something or another when you remember that your oil change is due. You pull up KraftonAI and tell it to “book me a service appointment for my vehicle at the dealership this weekend”. The AI proceeds to work on that task in the background, only prompting you for input if it meets a road block it doesn’t understand.
- Comment on Discuss 2 months ago:
Yeah, but you execute drone strikes in 3rd world countries all the time, CIA_chatbot, how can we tell when you’re doing it out of genuine anger?
- Comment on Anyone remember Heroes of Might & Magic 3? A remake is coming 2 months ago:
No, you’re fine, I totally understand the mistake. I AM a pretty big HoMM fan and I was unaware that they had licensed out the IP as well, so I can’t blame you for not knowing.
- Comment on Anyone remember Heroes of Might & Magic 3? A remake is coming 2 months ago:
I agree that there is something bland about the aesthetics of the game. From a distance (or in a thumbnail), it looks very good and faithful to the art style of the original games, just with some extra bells and whistles. However, upon closer examination there is something about the design language which feels like I’m looking at a mobile game ad. It could be that I associate HoMM with a hyper specific micro genre of fantasy art. My views are very HoMM 2 coded, and that game feels its art was ripped from the book jackets of Del Rey and Tor published paperbacks circa 1987. I love the look, especially the hero portraits.
So, this new look doesn’t really do anything for me. I’m not knowledgeable enough to suggest that AI was used to design some of these assets, but that’s the impression the art gives me, which I’m sure was not their intent.
- Comment on Anyone remember Heroes of Might & Magic 3? A remake is coming 2 months ago:
But, it’s not? Unless you’re aware of something I’m not, this game is published by Hooded Horse, and developed by Team Unfrozen.
