[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

She was credited with a pseudonym. It happened plenty in the 90s, and this wasn't long after. That means probably Hollywood talent. Someone prestigious who thought taking this role would be bad for her career, or maybe her agent thought that. But times have changed in the past 20 years, so maybe we can know who it is now.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

But will they credit Eva's voice actor by her real name this time? Whatever stigma there may have been in 2004 for being in a video game has got to be gone by now.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

There's also a new 3D factory game called Foundry. Having bounced off of Satisfactory, that one seems more promising as a fan of Factorio.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

In the US at least, this is false.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Potentially true. Or it was an accident that proved more lucrative than they thought it would. At the very least, it got there first and showed everyone else how to ruin multiplayer games.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago

It's a great game, but it's hard to argue that it didn't change the genre, and all of multiplayer video games, for the worse. Multiplayer games can no longer be designed to just be fun. They must also be addictive, they must retain players, they must keep them coming back, etc. using every manipulative trick in the book like XP bars and unlocks. You might say MMORPGs did this first, but this was the application of that feedback loop to a competitive action game.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

I just picked up Dread Delusion, Shadows of Doubt, and Stellar Tactics. I played demos of Dread Delusion and Shadows of Doubt a while back, and both of them blew me away; the former just launched out of early access and the latter is supposed to do so before the end of the year. Stellar Tactics is one that's intriguing, but I haven't played it yet. I've been playing Fallout 2 lately, and it made me want to find a CRPG that was more successful at what Starfield was trying to do; I typed in some tags into the Steam search, Stellar Tactics was what I found, and I think it'll scratch that itch. Stellar Tactics is also in early access, and it's been in early access since 2016 with no end in sight, but it's very systems driven, so I'll likely be okay with playing it early anyway.

18

Coming to modern platforms August 1st, from Aspyr. Nice to see all these old games from 5th and 6th gen consoles getting re-released on modern platforms when emulation was basically our only option before.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

Better than the people giving it a bad review for difficulty, it would seem.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

There's a revolving door of hundreds of players in the community at any given time. You can find a game in quick match with absolutely no skill-based matchmaking at most times of the day, so it's a total dice roll in that regard, or you can hit up the Skullgirls or Mix Masters Discord servers to find one at your skill level. Hunter Half Hands runs beginner tournaments, there are the Get Gr8 events to help learn the game, and there's a community danisen league to fill in for the game's lack of ranked mode that runs about 3 times per week in North America. This year, at Combo Breaker, the bracket was larger for Skullgirls than it was for Dragon Ball FighterZ. As far as I'm concerned, it's more alive than I'd need it to be, but I'm happy it's this alive.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 36 points 5 days ago

They iterated on a stale formula in a way that those customers had wanted. Palworld is also far more competently designed than you'd expect from its premise, but that premise is the kind of satire that only people familiar with Pokemon would write in the first place.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

Is social matchmaking some synonym for skill based matchmaking? Because the latter is what it says they're implementing, and it really shouldn't be controversial.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

Like everyone else, I've been playing Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. It is more challenging than the base game so far, but not dramatically so. The game gives you plenty of tools to deal with it, including situational loadouts to give you more damage or defense depending on what's giving you trouble. Maybe a lot of people got too complacent with a single build that handled it all in the base game.

When I wasn't playing that I was playing Fallout 2. It's continued to be just what the doctor ordered after watching the Fallout TV show, but now I really feel bottlenecked by my gear. I don't know if guns exist in the game that will do enough damage to take down some of the tankier enemies I've found, but if they do, I definitely can't afford them. I haven't even managed to find any armor to equip over my starting Vault 13 uniform, and there's always a huge money sink for certain unique items or quests that eat into my savings just as I became a thousand-aire. I'll have to find some ways to earn more caps quickly.

And when I wasn't playing either of those, I was playing more Skullgirls, but I'm always playing Skullgirls, so that's basically the free space on my bingo card.

53

Concise, entertaining, and backed up by math. The editing is on point here, and it's an interesting way to frame a situation I've been in myself thousands of times.

30

They finally just let you put points into the primary attributes on level up! Hopefully they carry it through to the next (hopefully) Pillars of Eternity game, because I always took issue with the flat bonuses you got to offense and defense on each level up. Plus the rest of this looks good too.

43

A simulation sandbox game that seems like it's got potential. I hope it's got more of an objective than something like Dwarf Fortress with tons of ways to get there, personally.

35
41

Huge W. Maybe the Stop Killing Games campaign, combined with some very real market realities, will save more games like this from companies with the liberty to do so. Unfortunately, it sounds like multiplayer will likely still depend on Steam servers rather than supporting LAN (I'd be happy to be proven wrong), but this is way better than the game just dying.

149

I don't think big companies know how to make a good FPS campaign anymore, let alone hone in on classic deathmatch multiplayer. The last FPS I bought was Half-Life: Alyx four years ago, and the first one to come along and interest me since then was Phantom Fury, but I'm letting that one iron out bugs for a few weeks before I pick it up. Even former TimeSplitters devs, given the opportunity to make a new TimeSplitters, made another Fortnite instead. Likely this new Perfect Dark was built to turn it into a live service that keeps players playing it forever rather than just making a fun deathmatch to play with your friends a handful of times, which would be missing the point. And all this is to say nothing about how those devs must be feeling when even a great game that sells well won't save you from Microsoft laying you off.

35
submitted 2 months ago by ampersandrew@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

For those who missed it, Embracer is split into three new publicly-traded companies, Asmodee Group (focused on board games) and two tentatively-named groups comprising their video game business. Wingefors, the CEO, and still (I believe) majority share holder of these three new companies, doesn't do many interviews.

Personally, as the acquisitions were happening, I was rooting for Embracer, because they were clearly trying to rebuild the type of publisher that the big ones today used to be, offering a large variety of options so that you can have hits and misses and keep experimenting to find what your customers want, where today's big publishers make a couple of games per year, leaving most types of games they used to make on the table, even if they were profitable, because they're not the most profitable. It's hard to keep track of what these three companies even own anymore, after splitting with Gearbox and Saber recently as well, but just prior to this shuffle, Embracer absolutely had so many irons in the fire that plenty of them were catching my interest, like the old days.

Unfortunately, Embracer did this with a lot of debt, and comes to this wisdom all to late:

I'm a firm believer in equity. I think debt in general is quite dangerous as a tool. You should be careful to carry too much in gaming.

And then he basically immediately disregards this wisdom with the next sentence. There's an old saying from Warrent Buffet, "A rising tide floats all boats…only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." And Wingefors was naked.

10
submitted 2 months ago by ampersandrew@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

Full disclosure: I'm friends with the guys who run this podcast and have appeared on other episodes, but I thought this story was particularly interesting and worth sharing.

152
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by ampersandrew@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

Actionable steps provided, especially if you ever bought The Crew! www.stopkillinggames.com

353
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by ampersandrew@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

This is a really good interview. tl;dw is...

  • their next game was going to be D&D, but they changed course and are doing something else now
  • Vincke has a vision for "the one RPG to rule them all", and each of their past three RPGs is a step closer to it
  • the next game is not going to be that master vision but one step closer toward it, with their previous 3 RPGs proving out emergent design/multiplayer, story and consequence, and personal stories/performance capture, respectively
  • Vincke would like to have this next game done in 3 years compared to BG3's 6 year development cycle, but realistically expects 4 years, as long as there isn't something like COVID-19 or a war in Ukraine to impede their progress
20
submitted 3 months ago by ampersandrew@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

She looks to have retained most of what made her cool in +R, except there's no Instant Kill for her to route into. Looks like a cool addition to the roster.

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ampersandrew

joined 3 months ago