Grangle1
@Grangle1@lemm.ee
- Comment on Fishing games? 3 days ago:
Although the concept of it being in a Sonic game was pretty silly (and an entire path to play through no less) and the character is really annoying, I heard that even the Big the Cat fishing mode in Sonic Adventure (originally on the Dreamcast) was even good, gameplay-wise. I have played it but I don’t have much experience in other fishing games to compare it to. The only other fishing (mini-)game I have for comparison is the fishing in the 3D Zelda games. Between the two I think I prefer Zelda, though.
- Comment on Almost 19% of Japanese people in their 20s have spent so much money on gacha they struggled with covering living expenses, survey reveals - AUTOMATON WEST 1 week ago:
Like I mentioned before, “tutorial pulls” are part of that hyper-generosity that gachas will commonly have for new players to give them enough of a dopamine rush to hang around and be more likely to spend more later. That generosity will not last and can’t last or elee the game will not make nearly as much money. Give it another week and you will find that the supposed good luck runs out, as well as the free currency offered for things like logging in, and then it will start requiring a ton of grinding or real world money to acquire the necessary currency to get to the “pity” in order to ensure you get a top-rarity item. That’s how gacha systems work.
- Comment on Almost 19% of Japanese people in their 20s have spent so much money on gacha they struggled with covering living expenses, survey reveals - AUTOMATON WEST 1 week ago:
Most “pity” systems require hundreds of pulls beforehand, which unless someone saves months worth of free currency for those pulls, can be very expensive in real world money to get the currency to afford. In a way, pity systems are just designed to increase the amount of money players spend.
- Comment on Almost 19% of Japanese people in their 20s have spent so much money on gacha they struggled with covering living expenses, survey reveals - AUTOMATON WEST 1 week ago:
The difference is in the details, that with other paid DLC, you actually get the thing you paid for, guaranteed. With a gacha, if they’re promoting some super-strong character, weapon, etc. that you want and you buy currency to spend in the gacha, you are not guaranteed to get that item or anything of the same quality/rarity in any of those pulls you make. It’s all random chance, gambling at its core. Exceptionally good or bad luck can start playing psychological tricks on you, such as FOMO (there will always be something stronger coming soon), sunk cost fallacy (you’ve already dumped this much into it and got nothing, what’s the difference with this much more?), and before you know it, if you’re not watching carefully, you’ve spent far more in in-game and/or real money than you realized. That’s far different than a one-time purchase straight-up for a cosmetic or weapon to use with no further need to spend any more, and that’s what gets people hooked like gambling. You may not have experienced this much because gachas tend to be very generous to new players in order to get them started out quickly as whales fodder and get them hooked on the adrenaline rush of “winning” in the gacha system before the gacha currency starts to dry up on them.
- Comment on Almost 19% of Japanese people in their 20s have spent so much money on gacha they struggled with covering living expenses, survey reveals - AUTOMATON WEST 1 week ago:
I mean, it can be both at the same time. The games may be good as games (I play a few myself) but the mechanic can also be extremely predatory to those who have a problem with gambling and/or controlling their spending.
- Comment on Found a good video sharing my opinion about Nintendo Switch 2 2 weeks ago:
Outrage farming is getting really tiring overall, not gonna lie. It’s OK, everyone, we can feel other things aside from angry and life will go on.
- Comment on Most under-utilized consoles? 2 weeks ago:
I’ve just seen a bunch of videos about it, haha.
- Comment on Most under-utilized consoles? 2 weeks ago:
The one notable time I can think of a game trying the dual perspective thing with the gamepad was Star Fox Zero at the end of its life cycle, and it was not received well at all because it made the control and aiming way too complicated since it was too much of a challenge to try to look at both screens at the same time. Can’t think of another game that tried something like that, but I did see a good number of games that used the gamepad for inventory, like the Zelda games and Monster Hunter.
- Comment on Most under-utilized consoles? 2 weeks ago:
Lack of advertising and its business model of the hardware basically being produced by licensees tacked on to other electronics products of the time ended up crippling consumer awareness, and the price point was the big nail in the coffin, at roughly $700 in the early 90s you really had to commit to wanting one. Unlike most other console companies, 3DO couldn’t afford to sell the hardware at a loss because they didn’t have much, if anything, for first party games to make up for it. It had some games that look like they’d be decent, at least a better quality library overall than arguably the Jaguar and definitely the CDi, but it’s that tough cycle in gaming where you need good games to sell consoles (especially at $700, in any time) but third party devs won’t make good games for consoles that don’t sell.
- Comment on My Advanced Retro Simulation Environment brings all the boys to the yard 4 weeks ago:
I like big content and I cannot lie, you other brothers can’t deny
- Comment on Musk 'Pressured' Reddit CEO to Silence DOGE Critics, Leaving Moderators Outraged: Report. 4 weeks ago:
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Tired of government censorship, whether it’s left or right wing. They both do it, and it sucks either way. Then both sides will “champion free speech” when they’re not the ones in power.
- Comment on Almost finished Gold and looking forward to starting Emerald. 4 weeks ago:
I recently purchased a copy of Alpha Sapphire since I haven’t finished a Hoenn playthrough yet. Looking forward to finally finishing a Hoenn region run!
- Comment on Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake New Trailer 4 weeks ago:
This, and it’s THE big traditional JRPG franchise in Japan itself, as big as or bigger than Final Fantasy. FF just happened to have more worldwide appeal.
- Comment on PeerTube, the Fediverse’s decentralized video plattform, from the perspective of Elena Rossini, italian filmmaker, photographer and activist 4 weeks ago:
I don’t think it will ever happen, but the way PeerTube as a whole would be able to rival YouTube is when looking at all instances as a whole, or a large number of federated instances sharing content. That distributes the content storage and bandwidth to help ease things up and expand the amount of content available/searchable on each instance. Kind of like how lemm.ee was made to help ease the load from other bigger instances of Lemmy such as lemmy.world. The closest a Fediverse platform has gotten to actually posing some real competition to a mainstream platform was Mastodon compared to Twitter/X, but even then it wasn’t just one instance but Mastodon as a whole.
That said, doesn’t Bluesky run on something like a federated model?
- Comment on BloodBorne Released 10 Years Ago Today, Fans Once Again Organize a Return to Yharnam 4 weeks ago:
My daily reminder that I’m older than I think/feel like I am.
- Comment on Your all-time favorite game? Let's discuss the best options! 5 weeks ago:
My “nostalgia favorites” will always be Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and Sonic 2 (Genesis version). Sonic 2 is just so fun to go back and play any time I want a quick retro sides rolling platformer fix, and I’ve played through it more times than I can count. OoT was the first game I played that showed me what games could be through a combination of story/cutscenes and gameplay, as someone who was never able to get my hands on an SNES to play the epic JRPGs of the console growing up (I loved my Genesis, but let’s be real, those kinds of games on Sega consoles didn’t really come until later).
Nowadays Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have eclipsed OoT for me, and for other more modern games another standout fave is Fire Emblem Three Houses, due in large part to its story and setting having everything I look for in a game, and its characters actually being more fleshed out and developed than the one-note units handed to you in many other games in the franchise. Engage has more… Engaging gameplay (sorry not sorry for the pun) but the story and characters hold it back quite a bit for me. Gameplay-wise, my favorite strategy RPG actually has to be Triangle Strategy, in that it has quite creative maps and every unit is designed with the potential to be useful depending on how you approach your own strategy, but I like the story/characters of Three Houses at least a bit more, and I tend to value story more in general in games. I’m also a big fan of the Ace Attorney franchise for the overarching story, characters and writing that it’s built up through its history. Phoenix, Maya, Edgeworth, Apollo and friends are all among some of my favorite characters in gaming, and I’m glad I decided long ago to give that quirky-seeming series a try. AA7 when, Capcom?
- Comment on You knew it was coming: Google begins testing AI-only search results | This version of Google won't show you the 10 blue links at all—Gemini completely takes over the results in AI Mode 1 month ago:
Sadly, I’ve seen how much the average non-tech enthusiast LOVES all this AI stuff. Like, people’s parents/grandparents who only occasionally use a computer when they have to. The types of folks who will call tech support and actually need the answer, “Is your computer powered on?” And there are far more people out there like that than many tech folks think. That’s the market that keeps powering this stuff.
- Comment on It probably won't give you nightmares or anything 1 month ago:
Probably the most legit scared I ever was in a video game, and I was 13.That, and Half-Mummified Gibdo Dad popping out of the wardrobe in Majora’s Mask.
- Comment on Balatro wins formal appeal to reclassify poker game as PEGI 12 2 months ago:
Ugh, I remember those days well. I saw personally what MMOs did to two friends of mine (one from high school and one from college), and how the high school friend was able to really pull himself together and make a good life for himself after we helped pull him out of MMO addiction, and how the college friend we couldn’t help just wallowed in a sea of empty energy drink cans and turned EVERYTHING into WoW during that time. I don’t know if he was able to build a solid life/career after college, but I could imagine him looking back at that time and wanting more from it. Either way, I saw both their situations and vowed to never pick up an MMO because I didn’t want the same to happen to me. Just because an addicting game isn’t extractive of one’s money doesn’t mean it’s not harmful if you have a hard time with self-control and moderation. You either lose your money directly or your time, which may cost you money in other ways in addition to other indirect costs. Ultimately you’ll end up losing something of great value you will unlikely get back, if ever.
- Comment on Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds - Announce Trailer 2 months ago:
My only frustration was that you had to essentially master the game completely to unlock all the racers. Sure, rewards for mastery all the way to the highest levels of the single player mode are good, but I felt they should have changed it up so you unlock all the racers earlier and offered some different rewatds for the end. Or maybe I’m just salty that I had to go to the very end on the highest difficulty to play as characters I wanted to play from the start, in a Sega racer, no less, which are generally harder than most. At least in a game like Smash Bros Brawl, you just had to beat the final boss to unlock Sonic, you didn’t have to perfect it on the highest difficulty.
- Comment on Who's making older games so expensive? 2 months ago:
Yep, it’s the collectors’ market. I say that as someone inspired by those very YT channels to get into the hobby myself. But I’m just looking to get games I remember and enjoy, not looking to get whole complete collections or anything. If a game I have my eye on becomes some “holy grail” $500 thing, I can live without it. What helps me, though, is living in a bigger town for a rural area that does have one or two brick-and-mortar retro game stores, where I may be able to find games I’m looking for at below eBay prices. That’s another hint; hit up the physical shops you may have near you, be they specialized game shops or even thrift stores. Diamonds in the rough do exist sometimes.
- Comment on Could you imagine a Nintendo title being advertised like this today? (Conker's Bad Fur Day, 2001) 3 months ago:
More of an anomaly than it is today, TBH. The console stores and Steam really do not care anymore what goes up on their shop, as long as they can see even a little $$$ from it. Porn games on the eShop and Steam are rampant.
- Comment on Could you imagine a Nintendo title being advertised like this today? (Conker's Bad Fur Day, 2001) 3 months ago:
Back in those times gaming was still seen as mainly a kid’s hobby by most, so I would almost guarantee Conker fooled a lot of parents (didn’t fool mine, though), especially being on the N64 and starring a “cute” squirrel as the main protagonist. I would actually argue, though, that parents cared a good deal more then than they do now. Night Trap and Mortal Kombat almost got games censored by the US government in the early 90s, and they’d be seen as quaint now. We’ve had a ratings system for 30 years and more underage kids than ever are probably playing adult oriented games today. An M rating is just what marketers need to sell their game to the junior high market because parents are ignorant and retailers just want the money, doesn’t matter from where.
- Comment on what was the last game you played in 2024? 3 months ago:
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, a few days ago. Been busy or just didn’t feel like gaming since then.
- Comment on Is the Wii good? 5 months ago:
As many have said, it’s all about the games. How well the WiiMote functions in a game is largely dependent on the actual game as well. Nintendo pretty much showed the peak of what they can do with the Wii Sports games, and there are a few other games that use the motion controls well, but they tend to be the minority. That said, as a traditional controller it’s not the worst thing in the world, and you can still use a Pro controller, the classic controller attachment or a GameCube controller for more traditional controls. The Wii library can be underrated due to the prevalence of shovelware, but there are great games like the Mario Galaxy games, Mario Kart Wii, the last good Mario Party before Superstars, the original versions of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, the aforementioned Wii Sports games, the second Mario Strikers, the best of the New Super Mario Bros games, Metroid Prime 3, Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn (if you can afford them), DKC Returns, Kirby’s Return to Dreamland, Kirby’s Epic Yarn (another game that used the motion controls well) and many more. (As an aside, I think the Wii U will also be known as a console with an under-rated library down the road.) Sadly, due to its perception and underpowered hardware for its generation, there’s not much actually good third-party software for it, but Nintendo themselves supported the Wii more than adequately.
- Comment on Barrel of Doom | Screenshot of what I'm playing, day 5 5 months ago:
Ah, yes, that infamous barrel. Claims many a hedgehog’s life due to timing out. I did actually manage once or twice as a kid to get under it through fast and clever jumping, until I only learned in adulthood that you’re supposed to move the D-pad up and down to control it. Really doesn’t help that the game doesn’t show you before how to control a barrel like that, and that stage can push players to the edge of danger timewise with or without that barrel.
- Comment on Elon's Death Machine (aka Tesla) Mows Down Deer at Full Speed , Keeps Going on "Autopilot" 5 months ago:
I know a lot of people here are/will be mad at Musk simply for personal political disagreement, but even just putting that aside, I’ve never liked the idea of self-driving cars. There’s just too much that can go wrong too easily, and in a 1-ton piece of metal and glass moving at speeds up to near 100 mph, you need to be able to have the control enough to respond within a few seconds if the unexpected happens, like a deer jumping in the middle of the road. Computers don’t, and may never, have the benefit of contextual awareness to make the right decision as often as a human would in those situations. I’m not going to cheer for the downfall of Musk or Tesla as a whole, but they do severely need to reconsider this idea or else there will be a lot of people hurt and/or killed and a lot of liability on them when it happens. That’s a lot of risk to take on for a smaller auto maker like them, just thinking in business terms.
- Comment on Stories and Mechanics around punishing over-aggression 5 months ago:
Competitive Pokémon tends to go back and forth between times of “stall” (turtling) and hyper-offense (aggression) dominating the metagame, depending on which strategies and team builds players will find. Whenever one becomes dominant, fans of the other will constantly hound tournament runners to change tiering or ban certain pokemon to change it.
As for a “fun” game to go hyper-aggressive with zero HP, max damage, I’ve seen some YouTubers attempt “Danger Mario” runs in the first two Paper Mario games, maximizing FP and BP and never taking HP when leveling, keeping Mario in the “danger” zone where lots of evasion or damage badges will stay activated. They then rely on those badges, items and partner abilities to avoid taking damage.
- Comment on Cable companies ask 5th Circuit to block FTC’s click-to-cancel rule | Cable companies worry rule will make it hard to talk customers out of canceling 5 months ago:
Well, no shit, that’s what the rule is SUPPOSED to do! No more impossible-to-cancel subscriptions, please.
- Comment on 'It Has Plateaued': Should We Be Worried About Console Gaming's Future? 5 months ago:
What I mean is, whether or not there’s going to be a visible graphical upgrade in the Switch 2. The console’s existence has been known for a while.