ampersandrew
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world
- Comment on GTA V was released on this day, 12 years ago 2 hours ago:
You called it something it wasn’t, either because you misunderstood the definition or willfully misrepresented it. That was the argument. The game can be criticized in all sorts of ways, but “grift” makes no sense here, assuming they’re doing what GTA V did and didn’t come up with some crazy new scheme that hasn’t been detailed yet. And even if the online mode was a deterrent to you, there’s a whole other part of the game above and beyond the online mode where you never have to even see that stuff that could make the game worth playing, meaning it wouldn’t be “just” a grift.
- Comment on 2 hours ago:
From the gameplay footage, it looks like a studio that’s only ever made walking simulators before is making their take on Dishonored. Maybe that’ll be pretty good, but I’d be surprised. What it certainly isn’t is an RPG that’s anything like Bloodlines 1, lol.
- Comment on 2 hours ago:
Realistically, this game’s got bigger problems than what its DLC strategy is.
- Comment on GTA V was released on this day, 12 years ago 2 hours ago:
Honestly, I’m not. Rockstar has changed their formula very little since 2008. But I don’t exactly have a lot of options for crime stories anymore, and they’ve been telling good stories for just as long as they’ve had this format.
- Comment on GTA V was released on this day, 12 years ago 3 hours ago:
I just think that if you’re going to call something a grift, it should actually be one, because words have meaning. We can call it all sorts of other things. “Predatory” is a good one. I myself called it “shitty”. That’s not arguing in favor of a giant corporation. You can’t just pick your favorite negative descriptor when it doesn’t apply.
- Comment on GTA V was released on this day, 12 years ago 3 hours ago:
Are you unaware that there’s a component of GTA 6 besides GTA online? Even in the online mode, they’re milking gamers for weak content using regular gambling. A grift would be like a carnival game that appears winnable but actually never is. For your gambling money, you do get “stuff” in GTA 6, even if you or I would consider it a poor value. I don’t know why a shitty online mode would make me want to play a good crime story single player mode less, but the mere existence of the single player mode easily makes it more than “just” that.
- Comment on GTA V was released on this day, 12 years ago 3 hours ago:
GTA is a crime story video game. “Dishonest gambling” doesn’t mean “gambling I don’t like”. A science-based dragon MMO Kickstarter is a grift. GTA 6 is a video game.
- Comment on GTA V was released on this day, 12 years ago 3 hours ago:
I don’t think you know what grift means.
- Comment on 'My Advice to Users Is to Accept Reality and Tune, or to Not Play' — Randy Pitchford Is at the 'Get a Refund From Steam' Stage of the Borderlands 4 PC Performance Backlash 23 hours ago:
Nah, that game’s great. The writing’s not good, especially for the villains, but people like that game because it’s good.
- Comment on 'My Advice to Users Is to Accept Reality and Tune, or to Not Play' — Randy Pitchford Is at the 'Get a Refund From Steam' Stage of the Borderlands 4 PC Performance Backlash 1 day ago:
It’s hard to consider an 81 on OpenCritic to be a trainwreck. People tend to buy games that review well, especially when it’s a co-op shooter with basically no competition.
- Comment on 'My Advice to Users Is to Accept Reality and Tune, or to Not Play' — Randy Pitchford Is at the 'Get a Refund From Steam' Stage of the Borderlands 4 PC Performance Backlash 1 day ago:
That would be hard to believe, because the game already conservatively made tens of millions of dollars in a few days.
- Comment on 'My Advice to Users Is to Accept Reality and Tune, or to Not Play' — Randy Pitchford Is at the 'Get a Refund From Steam' Stage of the Borderlands 4 PC Performance Backlash 1 day ago:
Is this not the third tabloid style headline here about essentially the same thing?
- Comment on The Crew from Ubisoft gets revived thanks to the The Crew Unlimited project 1 day ago:
Ubisoft didn’t do this. It’s a community project.
- Comment on Dispatch - Official PC and PS5 Release Date Trailer [October 22] 1 day ago:
The dispatch loop is extremely similar to a game called This is the Police. Any good management game like this will have situations where there is no correct decision, and the fun of it is having to make those tough calls. I’m curious to see if the core loop holds up over the full runtime, because it ran a little thin in This is the Police. The story bits between that harken back to Telltale are some much appreciated new special sauce on the formula in This is the Police, but that alone won’t keep the core loop fresh. Still, I’m looking forward to this.
- Submitted 1 day ago to games@lemmy.world | 6 comments
- Comment on [Lord Frogmire] The Switch 2 is EVIL and I'm Tired of Pretending It's Not 1 day ago:
I think these online subscriptions are proving to be a major factor in why there’s been a migration of audiences from consoles to PC. People are seemingly running the long-term calculus in their heads and realizing PC is cheaper at a certain threshold.
- Comment on Randy Pitchford Snaps Back at Borderlands 4 Criticism: 'Code Your Own Engine' 2 days ago:
I think that’s exactly his point.
- Comment on 'Borderlands 4 is a premium game made for premium gamers' is Randy Pitchford's tone deaf retort to the performance backlash: 'If you're trying to drive a monster truck with a leaf blower's motor, you're going to be disappointed' 2 days ago:
Not the current one, no. The Steam Deck is closer to a PS4 spec, and even if there weren’t optimization problems, this is built to a PS5 spec.
- Comment on In a week dominated by Silksong and Borderlands, co-op roguelike Shape of Dreams still managed to launch on Steam as an instant top-seller 2 days ago:
That’s interesting, because without even really looking for it, it came up in Nintendo Directs, Keighley presentations, Sony presentations, and any discourse about games moving around release dates on account of GTA VI. For whatever reason, this game’s release date was moved up by a couple of weeks over its initial release date announcement, and that pretty much never happens, so it made headlines for that too.
- Comment on In a week dominated by Silksong and Borderlands, co-op roguelike Shape of Dreams still managed to launch on Steam as an instant top-seller 2 days ago:
Boards like these don’t talk about Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed much either, but all of these are multi billion dollar franchises.
- Comment on In a week dominated by Silksong and Borderlands, co-op roguelike Shape of Dreams still managed to launch on Steam as an instant top-seller 2 days ago:
It’s by revenue over a certain amount of time, but I don’t know what that period of time is. A $35 game has to sell twice as many copies as a $70 game to rank just as high. Since the Steam Deck is about $400, depending on SKU, it’s usually in that top sellers list despite not matching the volume of sales that certain games do.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 Launches To Mostly Negative Steam Reviews Over Performance Issues And Crashing 5 days ago:
It wasn’t out of left field. They telegraphed it frequently.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 Launches To Mostly Negative Steam Reviews Over Performance Issues And Crashing 5 days ago:
I definitely wasn’t playing Borderlands at any point for the story. I like that it has one, but if they wrote some terrible villains, it doesn’t affect how much fun I had with my build synergies in those boss fights.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 Launches To Mostly Negative Steam Reviews Over Performance Issues And Crashing 5 days ago:
Borderlands 3 was significantly better, in my opinion.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 | Review Thread 6 days ago:
Alright, fair enough. There are two ways to interpret that sentence in English, and I guess I read it the other way, haha.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 | Review Thread 6 days ago:
Having played through the entire series this year, they’ve constantly communicated via their actions that they’re aware of what the previous game’s shortcomings were, and they acknowledged as much for BL4 in the marketing materials as well. As for Jack, leave him be. We’ve killed him, killed his fucked up clone, killed the AI preservation of his consciousness, and allied with the Terminator 2 friendly version of him via a body double/face-off situation. We’ve had enough Jack. Come up with a new good villain, lol.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 6 days ago:
The new DLC for Kingdom Come: Deliverance II came out, Legacy of the Forge. I’m playing it after finishing the main game, but it’s looking like it will probably be best enjoyed when slotted into the main game. It’s early goings, but it looks like it will involve a lot of crafting and then selling things to upgrade your home, your shop, and your reputation. Still, there are new quests and more backstory for Henry’s “pa”, Martin, and I’ll take any excuse to play more of this game.
I’ve been playing Mafia II: Definitive Edition. It’s a pretty good crime story that leans heavily on Goodfellas inspiration (I guess if you had to pick one, that’s the one to pick), but the gameplay often feels arbitrary, which is a weird way to put it but probably most accurate. There was one mission that was literally just drive to a place and drive back with some story in between. Most are simple setups where a firefight happens in the middle. There are mechanics from GTA IV present that don’t really fit back into Mafia II’s core loop. In other words, this game is totally fine but not exactly a masterpiece. It’s serviceable, and I miss crime stories in video games, so I’m playing through this series before I play The Old Country.
I’ll also throw in an anti-recommendation for New Tales from the Borderlands. It animates well and looks nice, but this game basically is only story, and the story is awful. I played through it because I’ve now played through the rest of the Borderlands games, except Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, and I suspect this game could be canon. If you don’t have the same compulsion to see the rest of the canon story that I do, steer clear. At least I’ve got Borderlands 4 waiting for me this weekend.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 | Review Thread 6 days ago:
For anyone curious, I politely asked a streamer to check for me, and this game seems to still have LAN, despite the lack of mention in their FAQ and the store page and the explicit removal in Borderlands 1 GOTY edition.
- Comment on Subscription models like Xbox Game Pass are "not properly valuing" developers, says former Bethesda exec 1 week ago:
Through lawsuits, we did get to see what those payouts were in the past, and they’re all individually negotiated in lump sums, not determined by algorithm. And those payouts were from the good days. Reporting indicates those payouts have dropped off dramatically, which was followed by a drop-off of Xbox ports, since that seems to be the primary way Xbox players play games at all.
- Comment on Subscription models like Xbox Game Pass are "not properly valuing" developers, says former Bethesda exec 1 week ago:
It actually is, and they listed that in the article.