Has anyone noticed all the train games hitting Steam lately? Here's one that looks pretty badass, Denshattack!, with some very striking graphics.

Anyone else hyped for this? Looks like the perfect game for perfecting runs.

Watch Dogs Legion is a great game thanks in large part to its incredible recruitment mechanic. It's got its flaws and limitations, but Legion laid the groundwork for what could have been a great feature going forward. Too bad Ubisoft killed Watch Dogs.

I'll probably get it eventually, but I'm curious about how folks are finding it on day 1.

Got to say I'm pretty disappointed to see lots of negative reviews on steam talking about performance issues and optimization problems, while Gearbox evidently still had the time and resources to put together more than $100 in day 1 DLC.

I have an upcoming trip with an extremely long-haul flight so I'm looking to pack my Steam deck with as much as I can to try to make it more bearable.

I have a merely 3 year old PC I bought for 1500€ a 5600x and 3060ti, yet it for some reason can't run cronos, a single player linear game, on low settings without constant lags

The whole game consists of grayscale. There is simply nothing that would require the computing power

And its not really a realistic progress of computing requirements, while they state that my entry level ryzen 5 5600x can run it on optimal settings, for some reason they require an extremely up to date GPU, which just tells me that they just crammed in every kind of graphics tech so their Grayscale smog looks better

Lately, the more time I spend in online games I’ve been (more frequently than before) coming across players that essentially don’t play games to their fullest extent. I’m not talking about grinding meta builds, sweating off in ranked game modes or combing through online forums for the best way to play. I am talking about ,for example, playing R6S and never participating in the drone phase, never using your operator’s abilities and never creating rotation holes. I don’t mind players not knowing what these things are or not playing the game optimally. I do mind simply turning your brain off and just run around to try and farm kills. This is a player not wanting to play R6 as they refuse to interact with what sets it apart and I can only wonder if this is because they are forcing themselves to play/like the game either because it has the “tactical” tag to it or because a popular streamer played it recently. Said players would be happier just playing another faster paced game. I am using R6 as the main example but there are multiple games when that also applies, like tanks in MMOs not marking enemies, people in BFs not spotting hostiles and drivers in racing sims refusing to let go of the gas pedal to take a corner. That’s it though from me I just wanted to blow off some steam and get my words out. GG

Edit: Peole are misunderstanding my post. I don’t care if people don’t sweat their balls off in a game. I’m not that good in most online games that I play either and I almost exclusively play single player RPGs. My point is that people that DO play a game in ranked for example, a pretty difficult co-op game or a survival hardcore sim and don’t interact with the game mechanics is an ongoing pandemic in gaming. If you play a game like HD2 and ignore your team and just treat it like COD zombies you are not going to win. Your team is going to lose and you won’t get any points for upgrading your gear or buying new stuff. You have to meet the game itself halfway. You have to interact with its mechanics that set it apart. You don’t need to play in the hardest difficulty, when you play games like R6S you don’t need to climb the ranked ladder- hop on quick play or unranked (once upon a time we used to have Terrorist Hunt). I mean to say that a lot of people buy into those games and they decide instead of playing the game the way they want to they play it the way need to. “I like to play the game casually” then play it casually- don’t hop on the most competitive modes of the game because YOU aren’t going to have fun. If you like chiller more arcade-y games then play chiller more arcade-y games there is no need to buy a game that by design is not for your tastes.

Edit (2): This is fun I like talking to you guys about this stuff!

I've been looking around for economic simulator games recently and tbh there isn't much. But it made me think about what i actually wanted out of a game like that, and honestly...

I'd absolutely love a game set in the Japanese finance ministry during the economic boom and subsequent bubble and economic crisis.

1.I like things on a more macro scale, rather than micro. So games like cities skylines and Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic are good, but still leave me itching

2. I hate that a lot of "economic" games are just business Sims. Obviously gaming in english is a bit of an American and eurocentric thing, and these places aren't famous for loving planned economies or having interesting economic ministries

3.The time period is interesting enough for a game like this. There's political and economic conflict, elections, and plenty of economic stuff to make spreadsheet nerd like me enjoy it.

4.Of course this era and area aren't exactly represented well so id love to see a game made set in it. (I'd make it myself but A.No time and B.Im not a programmer tbh)

Alternatively, I really wish there was a macro economic game set in the USSR, China, or some other socialist country. Actually, we'll, planning an economy without spending years in education, getting a job at a ministry, spending more years working your way up, and actually dealing with the consequences of your actions would be nice.

I know this idea appeals to about 5 people, give or take 4, but still

Dear Reader who I shall never know, in your eyes, I know this game was ultimately a fiction. However, I hope you’ll follow us in our analysis and recounting of this fantastical adventure. I hope I will be able to reminisce and review what we saw together. Even if your journey is over, I hope you’ll still want to tag along. And, most importantly, with all my heart, I hope that fantasy will keep giving you strength.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/52124778

This game is fun and has me hooked. I finished it after just a few days.

But the game feels incomplete and slightly rushed.

For example, as you progress through the game you can unlock new items to sell, but you unlock some items at the very end of the game, so it feels kind of pointless.

The fast travel system is not super useful as it takes you to places on the map that are kind of inconvenient and the games maps is small enough to just run to the destination just as fast in most instances.

The inventory management system is a bit annoying, you can only pick up stacks of 5 items. Not at the max, but at all. So if you just need to grab one apple to restock, you have to run back and forth to return the excess apples from the stack. You can also get into a situation where you don’t have a place to put an item down and need to trash it instead.

Money is never an issue in this game and there are perks to lower purchase prices, but it’s completely irreverent as you always have enough money.

The reward points you get to unlock things is also a bit pointless as you easy get so many of them that by the time you progress in the story and unlock the next tier, you can just buy everything right away.

The little town seems like there could be so much lore and things to unlock, but nothing happens. I assumed I was only halfway done the game when I finished it as there is so much left unresolved.

I assumed the game was made by a solo dev, but the credits rolled and I was shocked at how many people worked on this game.

So, while it was fun. I would not recommend buying it in its current state. I think it needs a few big dlcs before it can call itself a completed game.

Luigi's Mansion 3 was this close to greatness. Its first half is brilliant, with fantastic animations, its bursting at the seams with charm, great puzzles, a fantastic setting, and fun collecting. It's Nintendo at their best.

But as the game progresses, some flaws become more and more obvious. So much so that it kind of became annoying. It's also got one of the most annoying levels in a video game I've seen in over a decade. Despite this, its still an excellent game, just not as great as it could have been.

This isn't a post with like, hot takes or deep marxist analysis of class society in the Lands Between. It's just some thoughts I wanted to express on a smaller scale rather than throwing myself into the 4.5 million members of the Elden Ring subreddit or something.

Anyway, to preface a few things

1.Elden Ring good [shocking I know]. I won't go into too much detail since I'm three years late at this point. Just, if you like exploring in skyrim and fighting in ghost of tsushima, then you'll probably like this game

2. This is my first and only soulsborne game so far. There's going to be things I've complained about in a previous post here and that I'll talk about in this post that would've been different had I more knowledge about fromsoftware games.

3. I tried to look up as little as possible about this game. I would occasionally look at a guide for puzzles or an item location, but besides that i didnt look up build tips (beyond soft caps and scaling)

Without further ado

A. The combat and movement

The closest thing I've played before that is at all similar to Elden Ring is Ghost of Tsushima. They're very different games Obviously, but it did help me ease in a little.

To start, I rebinded the controls to be closer to ghost of tsushima, because I just could not get attacks being on the triggers.

But anyway I also had a hard time adjusting to just how...slow you are? You're not a lumbering giant, but every animation feels like it needs to get back to neutral before you move on to something else. I.e, a dodge has to be a full roll (save for backsteps). So instead of dodge-attack like in ghost of tsushima, it's dodge-wait-attack. Obviously the game shouldn't just be ghost of tsushima, but it did throw me off for a minute.

I got it after a while though, and it has its own rhythm to it I like. I think the early enemies teach you very well not to constantly panic roll, and for the most part where in the attack you're supposed to dodge (although simultaneously there are a few that are really hard to tell, especially later in the game, but for the most part the rule remains consistent)

I think I still prefer Ghost of Tsushima style controls but soulsborne definitely isn't bad, even with faster bosses and enemies.

But while fighting Malenia it did make me feel like having her "jump and spin back" retreat would've been a nice thing. I saw a suggestion by Joseph Anderson (who I generally disagree with) that a metroidvania style unlock system where you gain movement abilities as you progress could be good. There are some weapon arts like bloodhound step that have this type of feature so i wish there was more dodges than just rolling and jumping

2. Exploration

I love exploring in this game. For the most part it has a really good mix of obvious things that give you an insensitive to explore while also giving you little hidden things that aren't usually game changing but are still extremely helpful, especially for certain builds. There was maybe only a couple times where I felt really annoyed by the exploration, either relating to inexperience or npc quests.

A. Inexperience

There are certain things I don't mind not knowing until later or learning as a result of being in tune with the game. For example, one boss (Radahn) has a crypt on his in his massive boss arena, which is a dungeon with some rewards in it. I didn't mind missing this because it didn't impact me massively. Even if I could use the stuff in the dungeon, it wasnt groundbreaking and it was a reward for exploring.

Alternatively, there's stuff like hitting a trap to get on it and use it to get to a second floor of a dungeon.

Why should i know that's a thing? What logic is that? Maybe that's similar to things in other souls games but it's not common sense. Common sense would be a lever, which I assumed I just kept missing. That was one of the things I looked up. Afterwards i learned to hit stuff more, but a simple indication that I should hit that stuff would be better than me just learning by being told.

Similarly, illusion walls can be annoying. The first time I learned about them was when doing another dungeon (the one with the black knife assasin) because I couldn't find what I was supposed to in it. Again, afterwards I hit every wall I could find and felt genuine joy at finding secrets, but learning about it wasn't fun.

B. Npc quests

Now, I want to point out, I like these quests 200x more than skyrim or a ubisoft game. I dont want to be hand held through the quests and given a big red arrow guiding me like a zombie to the next location. But it was annoying having to constantly backtrack if I missed something. For example I did Millicent's questline around the same time as I got to Leyndelle's walls. I found her, cured her, sent her on her way, and then gave her the prosthetic. Later, luckily I looked up a guide when I couldn't find her in the moutaintops or consecrated snowfield and realized I missed a random village in Leyndelle that I needed to clear and do a boss in before she would continue.

Similarly, I found the second half of the haligtree medallion first because I had missed the village of the Albinaurics Un Lineria dozens of hours ago. Consequently I also missed out on Nephali Loux's questline. It wasn't tedious, but it felt annoying to clear out a low level area because I had simply missed one area earlier in the game. This didn't happen often, but because the npcs just wander off without telling you where they're going, it becomes infuriating trying to find some of these people. I've heard Shadow of the Erdtree actually does use markers and notes and that sounds like a great change.

However, I don't get the criticism that exploration is unrewarding because not everywhere has stuff that is good for your build. Firstly, most overworld exploration is fast. Defeating some enemies in a camp takes maybe a few minutes, so if you don't get an item that's good for you, alright. As for dungeons, 9/10 times there's some boss that'll give you a good rune reward. This is good, it means that no matter whatever else you find down there, you at least have a universal good. It lowers the risk of going into a dungeon and coming out with nothing. It incetivises exploration still with a fun boss and runes while also giving something extra for some people in some dungeons. So I don't think there needs to be a change here.

3. Bosses

Obviously the main point of the game is something important, and honestly it's about 80% good 15% meh and 5% bad, at most. I know some people don't like the repeat bosses, but honestly I didn't mind...most of them. Magma wyrms bugged me because they don't have a large movement, so they constantly do their annoying charge attack which I don't like. And i hate how Astel is repeated for basically no reason beyond "well we needed something :p." Especially because Astel is already not a great boss, for me at least. I found trying to hit him hard since it focuses on the center of his body only, which means trying to hit his head (which is both the easiest thing to hit and his weakspot) is difficult while staying locked on. This is repeated on ancient dragons too.

For some reason people really don't like dragons, but I dont get it. You fight 13 across the campaign, 2 of which are ancient dragons, 2 are bosses that aren't generic, and 3 are magma wyrms. That leaves 6 normal dragons, including Greyoll and her kin. That means there's about, in a 140 hour campaign, that's about 20 is hours between those dragons, and about 10 hours between every type of dragon. For me at least, that's okay. And the dragons themselves are okay. Use torrent, either all the time or to close the distance and get off of him, and it's okay. Otherwise everything is very well telegraphed and the camera isn't too bad as long as you focus on anything but the head.

If I had to rank my favorite boss fights it'd be

1.Malenia

2.Godfrey and Radagon

3.Morgott

Godfrey and Radagon are so hard to choose which one is better, so I just tied them at second place. I like all of these because they are so precise. There weren't times, for the most part at least, where I couldn't see things or couldn't understand timings, or when I'd just really get annoyed with a move*

Malenia really is my favorite. She's simultaneously mostly fair** while also needing you at your A game.

*I did get annoyed at Waterfowl at first

** Malenia's main unfairness comes from her waterfowl, which is really hard to learn how to dodge because of the stagger. The move has a stagger hitbox the same size as the radius of the sphere made by her sword. That means that if you get caught in it you'll stagger, and then get hit by the rest. The third, fourth and fifth flurries are really well timed so you can dodge them. But the first two happen in such quick succession that if you don't get the timing right you're dead. And it's hard to get the timing right considering the large hitbox and how fast you die when you inevitably fail. She also can't stance break during some attacks, while her stance meter resets anyway, which made it a little annoying when she wouldn't go down for essentially no reason.

I really like how she wasn't only staggerable, but you could knock her over completely with some attacks. When you're fighting a dragon the size of the moon or whatever, the only thing you can really do is stance break them. Heck, even Godfrey and Radagon weren't staggerable and they were about your size (well, at least closer than like Placidusax). There was one spell called Burn O'Flame which you get pretty late into the game, but it essentially meant I could duck under some of her attacked and hit her for massive damage, knock her down and hit her more. And I like waterfowl as an incentive to stay away, basically. When she got back up and I was far enough away, she would just slowly walk towards me, and it felt like facing against a rabid dog. Just knowing she was going to bite but now knowing when. This type of fight is a lot like Ghost of Tsushima, which is probably why I liked it so much. Punishing, draining, high damage and precise.

Radagon and Godfrey are probably just the fairest fights in the game. Their attacks are telegraphed well and I wouldn't really call any of their attacks bullshit. Radagon has some AOE spam, but besides that they both flowed really well.

Morgott is probably my favorite mid game boss ever. It brings back a lot of what you learned earlier with some twists. He varies between fast and slow while also not being too ridiculous for his size. I don't have much more to say really, he's just really good at everything a boss should be. He was a little underleveled by the time you get through Lyndelle though, so I would've liked him a little harder (at least with more hp) just so I could've fought him more.

Least favorites are hard to rank. But id say it's probably (in decreasing quality)

5.Rotten tree spirit

4.Ulcerated tree spirit

3.Astel 1

2. Astel 2

3. Rykard

I did play after the patch that added torrent to the Elden Beast fight, so if I had to guess Elden Beast probably would've been 2 or 3 on the list without Torrent

The tree spirits are repetitive, but not horrible. The cotton ones though always got the worst arena, especially since their rotten aoe clears out a big area and forces you to back away, which can get annoying on a thin walkway like on the haligtree.

Same with Ulcerated spirits, but they get even worse arenas and don't even get a good moveset.

Like I said, Astel has camera and hit issues, I also don't like his constant teleworking and running away halfway across the arena

Astel 2 is the same but with an extra grab attack and is annoying since I've already fought him

Rykard is probably my hottest take. I cannot understand why people like this boss. It's a gimmick boss, he's constantly staggered by the gimmick weapon, has way to much health, and, on account of the staggering, barely does anything. It wasn't a snoozefest like, say, Tibia Mariner (which I didn't even consider for the ranking, although I should've) but it didn't feel like i was getting better at anything besides just pressing buttons a little faster. The one thing I did like was that he moves so slowly you barely notice he's on top of you until it's too late. One of my deaths was because I got stuck between him and the wall, which is really cool considering the entire serpent theme, which I would've liked more if they did something with it.

I was shocked to learn that people hated godskin duo so much. I didn't love it, it was wierd, but I didn't find it impossible either. Granted I did beat malenia before fighting them so I just spammed scarlet anonia to rot them, so that probably made it easier.

3.Builds

I've only played one playthrough so far, so ill try out different builds later, but for my first game I played a vagabond dual wielder, with minor faith and arcane for incantations focusing on fire, rot, and dragon incantations.

For the most part this build was good. I went through the game underleveled and with between 18-30 vigor.

That is a lot lower than reccomended. I did die a lot, but something I learned that mattered more than vigor in the mid to late game is damage reduction. Between armor and Talismans and spells,you can get a ton of damage reduction which essentially increases your hp by hundreds of points. If you have high vigor but you're still getting one shot, try equipping damage reduction talismans or using damage reduction spells. I feel like this is a lot more important later than vigor is, and the community focuses on it too much. I'm not saying there aren't hard enemies or that the late game doesn't have enemies that do a ton of damage, just that getting one/two shot is not the norm, even for a low vigor character.

One of the things is I wish soulsborne games didn't treat greatswords and such like they're made of tungsten. Obviously they swing slower than Katanas or rapiers, but you can find videos of people swinging these massive swords elligently. I think it would feel better than every greatsword being treated like a final fantasy buster sword.

One thing I want to say is that my build was good in some areas and struggled in others. And that's a good thing. It shouldn't be that every build excels in every fight. Otherwise you get skyrim stealth archers which are just the path of least resistance. Yeah, maybe shield users struggle with malenia, but I struggled with commander niall. Sure maybe I struggled with elden Beast and Placidusax but a mage probably did way better because of their ranged attacks. A mage struggled with Renalla while I sweeper her. It not only makes making a build more enjoyable, but it also increases replayability.

Story: I won't post spoilers, but overall the story was surprisingly compelling. I know the story through item descriptions is a meme, but it's genuinely cool reading all the little descriptions and learning about the world. I like that way more than charecter goes up to wall and explains the history halfway through the main quest or whatever. Personally I chose Ranni's ending, but I get why you'd choose the other ones too (well, except a certain loathsome character's one). Not much more to say really.

Nitpicks and little things:

These aren't massive but I did want to say something before closing out the post.

The game can be inconsistent with run backs at times. Most bosses will have a checkpoint right before a boss, and that's fine. But a couple times they won't for basically no reason. The two that stuck out to me are the Red wolf of Radagon and Renalla. They have run backs, but they're not endurance tests since you barely have to fight anyone. Renalla's literally has no enemies at all, so I don't get why I had to run back everytime, since theres a perfect spot for a grace right in front of the boss anyway.

I'm kinda getting sick of Katanas being the best weapons in games. Katanas aren't the definitive best weapon in Elden ring, but they are some of the best. So much so two of them (moonveil and rivers of blood) had to be nerfed in updates. I get it, they're cool and were useful irl but they don't have to always be a thing and don't always have to be top tier.

The game is beautiful of course, so I didn't feel a need to point it out in extreme detail. However the music was suprisingly lacking. There's only a few tracks (godskin apostles, the Radagon/main theme, Malenia's second phase to name a few) that really got my attention. Everything else kinda was just there, which is odd imo.

Lastly, I just wanted to share this one bit. I had kept my charecter under a veil or mask the whole game basically, just for the stats. After beating the final boss, I took it off and kinda had a "despite everything, it's still you" moment (besides the glowing dragon eyes) which I really liked. This isn't anything big, but I just wanted to share it.

Overall id say it's a really good game. I wouldn't reccomend it to everyone, but if you know someone who wants to play a game where they fight enemies in a dying world where they can kill dragons and take their power while dual wielding katanas, then probably reccomend them Elden Ring over Skyrim.

cross-posted from: https://lemmyverse.link/beehaw.org/post/21767831

DICE is yet to give clarity on map sizes, comment section is the usual dumpster fire.

Astro Bot is one of my favorite games of all time. As someone who grew up with PlayStation and 3D Platformers, it does everything so perfectly, and is such a love letter to the genre, that you can't help but love it. But its mechanics are also rock solid. This is as close to a perfect game as we're ever going to see.

I'm a newcomer to this channel. I'm really addicted to Pvz2. I really want to play the Pvz2 original, but I can't seem to find it. I really want to play that version, so is there anyone who can give me the Android file of the original Pvz2 version? thank you

Here's how the clan selection screen looks at the moment:

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.eco.br/post/15797053

If anyone can make a compilation of news and articles in the facts, that would be great.

For those who don't know, Roblox is a publicly traded company and they are down almost 2bn dol on the stock market because they are being accused of facilitating the sexual exploration and grooming of children.

They just banned a player who was groomed by a roblox developer and then started a catch a predator project that resulted in the arrest of 6 adults accused of predating on children using the game.

Chris Hansen contacted the player and they are doing a documentary on the sexual predation that occurs on the plataform. There is a class action, so if you are in the US and know someone who has been abused on roblox, you should contact them.

I don't know much about the situation, I just watched a couple articles about it.

To top it all off, the CEO announced that roblox is pivoting to becoming a dating website. This is not the onion, fellers.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/46035991

Good Day good people.

I am looking for some more examples of Video Games where there is a plot, but for one reason or another, the result of the plot is that nothing happens. My criteria for this is fairly lax on the "how" but in some sense, by some definition by the end of the game, absolutely nothing has happened. I'm hoping some of you fine people may be able to identify some instances of such a thing.

Examples (I've chosen to spoiler tag everything as just being listed gives away certain plot elements. All examples given here are niche titles from over 15 years ago).:

• Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere (specifically the Japanese release): Huge inter-corporate conflict with several different factions and paths you can follow. One you go through all the different endings, the game reveals that it's just a simulation made by one guy to make sure no matter what happens in an upcoming conflict; your character, an AI, will kill the dude who cucked him.
• Persona 2: Innocent Sin: You spend the whole game fighting Nyarlathotep to prevent him and the Nazis from destroying the world. At the end of the game, you fail and choose to abort the timeline and erase everyone else's memories, leaving the main character stranded in the doomed timeline.
• Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter: This is the most boring way for this to play out IMO as it's just a straight coma twist

---

So please. Let me know any and all games you can think of where the end result of the plot is that nothing happens. The more ridiculous, the better!

(Sorry, for repost. I didn't know about the crosspost feature)

Luigi's Mansion 3 is an almost perfect game. The first half is an incredible experience, and the most charm I've ever seen in an Nintendo game. But the second half has some major flaws that holds it back.