Katana314

@Katana314@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  This was a time period when I willingly shilled Microsoft because they were the underdog option. I didn’t want Google to have monopoly on web design or non-Apple phones, and I think I was right to.

  Of course, now Microsoft holds its own unholy monopolies, and I can regret that all I like…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Just get a Steam Deck, and add a hub and wireless controller.

  Oh, but it won’t run full-detail AAA releases at 4K? Nothing cheap will. That is exclusively the domain of consoles, earned through direct-contact optimization with developers. That’s still enough horsepower for the thousands of great indie games on Steam, many of which are simple enough to run fine on a midsize TV on the small Deck CPU.

  Basically, if someone is adamant about running high-detail games on their TV using Steam, they’re already a niche enough market that it really doesn’t make sense to build up a single SKU for them and hope for bulk manufacturing savings the same way you could for consoles.

  It’s probably better off for developers to keep targeting the Deck as a general metric point anyway. The especially good news there is, once devs do that, Linux desktop gamers benefit anyway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When was the last time you actually laughed while playing a game?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I still need to start this.

  But I know the feel - games that expand their emotional range often get the best reactions because moving to an extreme of seriousness, sadness, or even humor, can shock the player.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Over 47% of Stop Killing Games Signatures Have Already Been Verified⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I regret that after Ross’s stepping back, I didn’t give this issue much attention. I suppose we have to trust that it’s sifting through the slow gears of politics, but with so many “bull” responses to petitions it’s likely worth keeping public attention on it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ROG Xbox Ally runs better on Linux than the Windows it ships with — new test shows up to 32% higher FPS⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I was able to play through most of AC: Odyssey on my deck, thanks to Lutris. I also use Heroic just because I’ve never wanted to install Epic’s launcher.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Pushes Xbox Division to Hit Higher Profit Margins⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  In support of the move in spirit, but: Any ideas to prevent a company from circumventing this via dummying up contractor firms? Eg, “We employ this software company started by our founder to write our code. Coincidentally, their pay is .1% of the pay at Microsoft”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox ditching hardware and exclusive games "makes sense," former Microsoft exec and Blizzard boss says, as "only a moron would continue" making consoles as games go third party⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve always been okay with keeping gaming libraries digital - but I think the larger console population might be okay with that too if we could disconnect digital games from account-based ownership - the kind where a company can go “Oh, whoops, we lost the license to this fart sound effect. We’re going to have to remove this game from your library.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why would I buy this?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I can’t say I like how /Games often circles around negative attention rather than positive.

  Activision spent billions on marketing so people will buy these stupid Ultra Editions. Even negative attention gets people thinking about and talking about the game.

  Instead, post about the cool indie games out that you think deserve far more attention than this battle pass slop. Let Activision come check up on us and cry because for all their efforts no one even cares to hate on their game.

  Theres an asymmetric game out as a demo, called Carnival Hunt. It has a really unique aesthetic, and isn’t all that fun yet, in part because of the formula being refined and players getting better at it. But I like the idea: Rather than TCM’s idea of unlocking doors towards an exit, the survivors, “bunnies”, are trying to climb the floors of a large building, with each method of ascending a floor requiring various tools and making noise. Some ways up are harder to set up but easier to repeat, others only work if the killer is ignoring them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ex PlayStation exec says Sony can't keep "increasing the graphics power" with new consoles after tech plateau, but PS5 has already "made almost every game a better game"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The only occasion I could buy that a “console makes the exclusives” is when the costs are so high that the investors decide a $60 price tag isn’t enough.

  That can be alleviated with DLC, or live service bullshit; or it can become an incentive to buy a particular console.

  Then, when someone is braindead and doesn’t want a big epic award winning adventure, they’ll use that same console to play Fortnite. Thus, God of War helps sell VBucks or whatever.

  It’s a weird analysis, but even though we no longer see console exclusives and it’s seen as a pro consumer move, I also think it was just a way for managers to boost one quarter’s revenue, and it wasn’t really good for the console ecosystem as a whole, especially considering how it would fund future exclusive epics.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Great business idea, tbh⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Japanese principles of honorable work, fear of retribution in future jobs. They’re brought up to expect a very different relationship with their company, and end up with a self-abusive mentality that they must deserve the mistreatment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They say word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing. What games did you (not) enjoy that came well-recommended by friends to you, and why did they recommend it to you?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  What exactly do you see as a punishing death? Erasing someone’s save file? The only other thing I can think of besides permanently taking consumables they won’t be restocked is sending you back a long distance to redo a bunch of fights again - and DS does literally that. DS2 even lowers your max HP as an additional Fuck You.

  You’re not the first person to say dying is “not so bad” in those games and I still can only view those as the ritualistic statement of an insane person. Every other action game I play, I rarely die, and when I do it just has me retry the singular thing I was attempting in that past minute. Even other hard games, like Super Meat Boy or Ori and the Blind Forest, don’t force large area repetition, or take away items as punishment. The mastery of completing 18 tasks perfectly in succession is for speedrunners - it’s not something I or most players are interested in, and it’s solely a source of stress, not excitement.

  Heck, Tunic had the money-loss system during development. The dev took it away before release (you just lose a paltry amount and can still get it back) and the game was still great.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They say word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing. What games did you (not) enjoy that came well-recommended by friends to you, and why did they recommend it to you?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I disagree with this. I think Dark Souls does tell you which are approachable or not. It’s just not as obvious as other games. Some games will have a sign for the player that says “this path is dangerous” but DS doesn’t. It has characters talk about venturing into the catacombs. It has characters point out the aquaduct is the path to the first (and at the time the only you know of) Bell of Awakening. It tucks the elevator into New Londo behind the bonfire, where stuff will be later but you won’t see yet. It also tells you a lot about locations in item descriptions.

  That’s…false.

  The very first NPC you find at Firelink Shrine tells you there are two bells - one above, and one far below. It strongly implies both are equal options. There are at least 3 ways out of Firelink Shrine; one happens to go below, just like your friend the NPC said, to New Londo.

  For players still acclimating to the basics of the combat, New Londo is a terrible novice experience. It requires perfectly tight positioning on teensy platforms barely visible through the water, and relies on limited items to even make a single attempt through the ghost-ridden area. That is a ton of mechanics that would be fine to slowly introduce players to, but it’s like putting the “Allspice Turducken while in a tornado” level of Overcooked first.

  Then you’re talking about the Catacombs? The area whose entrance has infinitely respawning skeletons? Give up, man.

  Dark Souls’ failure isn’t talking through NPCs - dozens of games that give your character a radio do just that. It’s from literally lying to you with misleading tripe and having no interest in any form of teaching - be it Half-Life 2’s nonverbal teaching or any verbally direct form. I had to play games by other devs, imitating the better parts of their formula, to learn FromSoft is just uniquely TERRIBLE at it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They say word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing. What games did you (not) enjoy that came well-recommended by friends to you, and why did they recommend it to you?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That is…ABSOLUTELY false.

  People frequently point to the idea that if you collect an item like a Soul of Lost X, or a weapon, and then die, you get to keep the item. But the game also has consumable items used to make tons of options easier within the world. Things that enhance your weapon temporarily, give an extra health boost, or give you souls. Players that use these without making much use of them, or even misuse them due to nebulously archaic descriptions, will have nothing given back to them later on, making a venture even harder than the first few go’s.

  Plus, you’re likely not to get as many level ups due to lost souls, meaning you’re going to get even more of a difficulty ramp than other players.

  I’m sorry - it’s just juvenile the way people who obsess over this game will defend every issue with “it’s not for every person” - especially when indie devs that have TWEAKED the formula, and FIXED the issues, end up making for very fun games. No one is playing them and complaining “Man, I wish I’d accidentally spent an hour going the wrong way at the start!”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They say word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing. What games did you (not) enjoy that came well-recommended by friends to you, and why did they recommend it to you?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not far in Silksong - have not actually been stopped by difficulty yet - but even the obstinately unguided exploration is getting to me. And I do worry about the reports of it being too hard by others.

  I never actually beat the final boss of the first game. Gave it a few tries, decided something as hard as that being a two-phase where the second hits harder is bullshit, Just decided to YouTube the ending.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They say word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing. What games did you (not) enjoy that came well-recommended by friends to you, and why did they recommend it to you?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s funny that tastes diverge so much. I love artificial scarcity, as a way of rewarding my exploration. Spotting out a trove of batteries wouldn’t feel so rewarding if I already had 5 and they last an hour.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They say word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing. What games did you (not) enjoy that came well-recommended by friends to you, and why did they recommend it to you?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I ended up giving up at one of the clicker sequences.

  The game lore says they’re blind and navigate by hearing. The game code does not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They say word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing. What games did you (not) enjoy that came well-recommended by friends to you, and why did they recommend it to you?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Counterpoint: Dark Souls is hard, because it gives a lot of options from the get go, and no information on which ones will be approachable or not. NO other major Soulslike I’ve played does this in the way DS did.

  It also relies very hard on death alone as a teaching tool even when it says nothing. Players don’t see “You died. This boss is too tough! Maybe you should go back and upgrade your weapons.” They just see “You Died.” and interpret “Should have dodged that 87th swing!”

  Worse, it has BAD lessons through the lost souls system. It makes sense as a pressure tool to make you fear death, but it teaches new players the wrong thing: For players to immediately beeline for the spot of their death without considering exploration, build changes, etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They say word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing. What games did you (not) enjoy that came well-recommended by friends to you, and why did they recommend it to you?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This game was what pulled me into PC gaming, but when I’ve watched novices return to it even with all the time I spent listening to their commentaries on good teaching…players don’t learn the things they want well, and I can’t blame them on reflection. Even things like where to go are tough for reasons they shouldn’t be.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They say word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing. What games did you (not) enjoy that came well-recommended by friends to you, and why did they recommend it to you?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve played many Soulslikes, and found pretty much all of them fun…EXCEPT for the ones by FromSoftware. All others branch out into a lot of exploration, they just don’t put 8 paths square at the beginning of the game and then slap you down for 5 of them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They say word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing. What games did you (not) enjoy that came well-recommended by friends to you, and why did they recommend it to you?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If I looked up a getting started guide, I’d feel constrained by its arcane instructions. “Go this way, take the third door, but DON’T talk to that NPC yet…”

  Fun games are open to the player exploring, without massively disproportionate punishment for it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨On January 1st of 2026, Texas will be required to give ID to download apps from the app stores. It doesn't matter if it's NSFW or not.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the limit for me was the articles about forced repatriation, where China had snatch squads sent into other countries to force people to return, even when they had broken no laws recognized by that country. Oh, and the Uyghur genocides, which multiple global newspapers have reported on.

  I will accept “US Bad”. These days, any claim of a large empire being perfect should be treated with massive suspicion.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You can get quite a few options at Itch.io if you filter for games that have an HTML5 version, and click through - much faster than installing options from Steam Next Fest. Unity and other small game engines have been perfect for that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft wants you to talk to your PC and let AI control it⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  “We are on the cusp of the next AI evolution, in which we, the tech company, can simply say the word ‘Money’ to our AI, and it will automatically transfer money directly from our investors into our wallets. Future versions won’t require us to say anything, permitting AIs to write their own next press release for budding, just-around-the-corner technology in an E-mail to investors.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Many developers leave GZDoom due to leader conflicts and fork it into UZDoom⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A little lesson about technical projects: You will quickly reach 95% completion and have something amazing to show off. Then, 95% of the work is completing that last 5% in order to make the prototype usable.

  AI is good at making itself look ready. It is nowhere near ready.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A player before me destroyed a bridge in [the Tides of Tomorrow] demo, so I had to build it again in this narrative adventure where your choices have consequences for others⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think this is why a certain scrolling shooter at the endgame of a certain game closely located to a tomato didn’t emotionally work for me. I can do the math - it can’t just throw that many other players at the problem to get me through the enemy ships, and the game needed to be playable off the internet since little else of it was online.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The above poster is likely to become a racist terrorist, given their history of comments getting downvoted.

  /logic

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Forbidden knowledge⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not with de facto mayor Roland promising them a better future under his factory empire.

  (Yeah, hard to work in Another Crab’s Treasure references)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Next Fest is back for October 2025. What good demos have you found?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  FUNKYHEART: In which the people who wrote that bunny-hopping script for Half-Life 2 speedrunning made a video game, in which they’re also strange cyber demon lesbians.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Next Fest is back for October 2025. What good demos have you found?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  For some of the cases where enemies are getting multiple turns in a row, using an S-Break (RT+D-pad) can be a good way to get yourself back on positive ground. If you get a turn, it also helps to give defensive buffs to the VIP before the enemy attacks them.

  That said, I have heard that while Nightmare difficulty poses a great challenge to some masochists and optimizers, it’s not a difficulty level the developers really balanced around.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Next Fest is back for October 2025. What good demos have you found?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Just tried it out. I’m unfamiliar with the extraction shooter genre, but it was interesting, I’m not necessarily opposed to tactical complexity for its own sake. I died to a minefield, and then on the next go didn’t have a weapon; so some of the mechanics come across a little bit unclear.