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ampersandrew

@ ampersandrew @lemmy.world

Posts
70
Comments
1472
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • To the rapidly aging person reading this: GameFAQs is 30 years old, and people are sharing their memories of the venerable guide hub

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  • I'm not convinced the market for strategy guides was "booming" by the time we got to 360, even if some existed. That was the same time manuals started to disappear, and it was even the generation before that that the obtuse moon logic of older games was discarded, I'd wager due to GameFAQs.

    I'd imagine the reason we went back around to gaming outlets handling guides again is that there's still a desire for text-based guides, but video guides have a monetary compensation to them that text-based guides on GameFAQs don't when they're crowdsourced. I sure miss being able to go to GameFAQs whenever I need to look up anything for a game in the past ~7 years or so.

  • PlayStation State of Play Japan airs this Tuesday, November 11

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  • No one wants to scope their games back down either, especially when they're met with complaints like The Outer Worlds.

  • To the rapidly aging person reading this: GameFAQs is 30 years old, and people are sharing their memories of the venerable guide hub

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  • I'm sure there were other sources before it ended up on GameFAQs, but it was a one-stop shop for all the stuff you would have found in magazines and strategy guides, and it was free. And that was the difference. The one kid on the playground who knew about GameFAQs would share, and internet adoption only went up over time. GameFAQs is almost solely responsible for strategy guides and hint hotlines becoming obsolete.

  • To the rapidly aging person reading this: GameFAQs is 30 years old, and people are sharing their memories of the venerable guide hub

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  • GameFAQs was definitely responsible for anyone knowing the fatalities in Mortal Kombat games for a while. I was using it plenty in the mid 90s.

  • What's a recent game you've tried playing that isn't worth the hype?

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  • I had a great time with that game with the difficulty turned up a few notches. It really makes you use the tools in your tool belt, plan ahead for weaknesses, and lay traps. Without that stuff, I likely would have found it to be a generic open world, too. The story will always be ridiculous, but even taking itself seriously, there's a payoff toward the end of the game where taking itself so seriously is still satisfying and makes sense, even with a world filled with absurd robot dinosaurs.

  • What's a recent game you've tried playing that isn't worth the hype?

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  • I leaned toward games that came highly recommended that I actually played.

  • What's a recent game you've tried playing that isn't worth the hype?

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  • Souls games didn't make sense to me until I saw Giant Bomb play through Demon's Souls. Mechanics that I didn't know were there were explained in plain English, and then I could better understand where I went wrong when I died.

  • What's a recent game you've tried playing that isn't worth the hype?

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  • Yeah, I liked that one more than its reputation as well. In some ways, I liked it better than the 2 remake.

  • What's a recent game you've tried playing that isn't worth the hype?

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  • I haven't played any 3.5e proper, but I understand Pillars of Eternity 1 is largely based on it, and I've played a handful of the 2e games. I dig a lot of the changes in 5e. I wouldn't say the power is so flat that the differentiation only comes down to role play; I'd say a lot of it comes from the apples and oranges comparisons between classes, like things beyond to-hit roles. Your fighter has no AoE attacks like the wizard has but has Second Wind and Action Surge, for instance. The advantage to flattening the differences a bit more is that your character's role is less preordained ("you are playing class X, so you must be responsible for Y") and that you are less hamstrung by the absence of one particular role, which scales better to small parties.

  • What's a recent game you've tried playing that isn't worth the hype?

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  • You know, one man's trash is another man's treasure. I'd say Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is worth playing for a lot of reasons, but I think it's got huge fundamental issues in both its combat and narrative design; it's still on the short list for most outlets' game of the year awards this year. Hades just got a sequel, and I didn't even care for the first one. For many people, those two games are just about the only roguelikes or -lites they've ever played, but I don't think they're even good ones of those; the level generation is so limited that you'll have seen all their permutations quite quickly, and the bonuses from boons just about all feel superfluous and interchangeable. Hollow Knight holds this legendary status among metroidvanias, and Silksong followed suit. I thought Hollow Knight was just fine, but I was surprised to find that this was the game with that sort of following. When facing the possibility of playing Silksong this year or about 5 other video games that came out this year, I don't think Silksong is making the cut.

    But your mileage will absolutely vary. These games have hype for a reason: a lot of people love them. You might, too.

  • What's a recent game you've tried playing that isn't worth the hype?

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  • In a lot of cases, the people who enjoyed it will have already said what they wanted to say about it, and then the detractors can just yell out the loudest. There's a perception that BioShock Infinite was only praised because of release hype, and a lot of people look back at it unkindly for one reason or another, but I've seen a number of people experience it for the first time in just the past couple of years, unaware of any reputation it might have, and they loved it like we all did at launch.

  • ‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ Is Postponed Again — to November 2026

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  • The campaign, yes.

  • ‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ Is Postponed Again — to November 2026

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  • Well, it keeps getting pushed back, not forward, so that helps.

  • ‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ Is Postponed Again — to November 2026

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  • I'd take GTA 4 or 5 over San Andreas, easily. And at this point, a large part of the appeal is GTA Online for a ton of folks; not me, but a ton of folks.

  • Sliced off the tip of my thumb, what are some good one handed games?

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  • Which thumb? If your left thumb is still functional, when I had a hand injury in middle school, I got to be really good at Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2. If your dominant/mouse hand is still functional, anything mouse-driven ought to do, and that covers a wide range of genres from CRPGs to adventure games to 4X games and more.

  • Square Enix says it wants generative AI to be doing 70% of its QA and debugging by the end of 2027

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  • I don't know what they were testing, but if your output is text, it will be a lot easier for the AI to know it's correct than any of the plethora of ways that video games can go subtly wrong, and that's where my lack of faith comes from. Even scraping text from the internet, my experience is more often that AI is confident in its wrong answer than it is helpful.

  • Square Enix says it wants generative AI to be doing 70% of its QA and debugging by the end of 2027

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  • It also only works as long as the AI can actually competently do the QA work. This is what an AI thinks a video game is. To do QA, it will have to know that something is wrong, flag it, and be able to tell when it's fixed. The most likely situation I can foresee is that it creates even more work for the remaining humans to do when they're already operating at a deficit.

  • Rise of the Tomb Raider (SteamDeck)

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  • If you've never had a gaming computer before and you're on a budget, look up how to set up Heroic Games Launcher and make accounts with Epic and GOG. They give away free games all the time, and almost all of them will work on Steam Deck.

  • Which year was the most stacked for game releases?

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  • 1998 comes up a lot in response to this question, for good reason. Pokemon Red/Blue, Baldur's Gate, Metal Gear Solid, Thief, Half-Life, Fallout 2, StarCraft, and on and on. Games were made much more quickly back then, and the technological advancements allowed for a lot of these games to do new things that no one had done before, that were quite predictably going to be well-received.

    If I'm putting together a pantheon of great years in gaming, it looks like 1998, 2004, 2007, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2023. If I've got to pick one, it might be 2004. Half-Life 2, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (an odd choice for many, but it's maybe my favorite in the series), Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, Halo 2, Burnout 3: Takedown, Star Wars: Battlefront, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Unreal Tournament 2004, The Sims 2, Doom 3, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Viewtiful Joe 2, Ninja Gaiden, Counter-Strike: Source, etc., etc. This was a magical time in online multiplayer, where it was pretty new for most, and you could do things like proximity chat in a shooter and expect people to actually use it for the video game at hand instead of spewing slurs into the mic. Local multiplayer was abundant. Obtuse game design made to sell strategy guides was just about obsolete, and DLC had yet to be invented (outside of beefier expansions). Midnight launches were exciting, and I have fond memories of, for reasons I can't explain, playing Halo 2 on launch day in a 12-player LAN using bean bags, projectors, and 3 Xboxes set up in a local college's racket ball court.

  • Assassin's Creed is a "forever brand" because Ubisoft supported huge risks with it, ex director says: "Whereas, say, EA, you get these awful execs and they never made games and they came from toothpas

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  • The Egypt one was definitely one where they changed it a lot. So much so that I no longer enjoyed playing them.

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    The Video-Game Industry Has a Problem: There Are Too Many Games

    www.bloomberg.com /news/newsletters/2025-09-26/the-video-game-industry-has-a-problem-there-are-too-many-games
  • Linux Gaming @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    Baldur's Gate 3 now has a native Linux build

    bsky.app /profile/larianstudios.com/post/3lzj7oygj3c2u
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world
    October 22

    Dispatch - Official PC and PS5 Release Date Trailer

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    If you miss old network multiplayer games, or would like to try them with your friends for the first time, may I suggest setting them up via SoftEtherVPN?

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    The Making of Wolfenstein - Noclip Documentary

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    New Valve trademark for 'Steam Frame', looks like we're getting new hardware

    www.gamingonlinux.com /2025/09/new-valve-trademark-for-steam-frame-looks-like-were-getting-new-hardware/
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    007 First Light – Gameplay Reveal

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    'Perfect Dark' Developer Lays Off Staff After Funding Deal Falls Through

    www.bloomberg.com /news/articles/2025-09-02/-perfect-dark-developer-lays-off-staff-after-funding-deal-falls-through
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world
    Alanah Pearce

    I asked 20 game developers about Stop Killing Games.

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    Atari has acquired five Ubisoft games, including Child of Eden and Grow Home, and will re-release and ‘evolve’ them | VGC

    www.videogameschronicle.com /news/atari-has-acquired-five-ubisoft-games-including-child-of-eden-and-grow-home-and-will-re-release-and-evolve-them/
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion

    www.gamesindustry.biz /at-gamescom-it-felt-like-the-industry-now-has-a-plan-make-games-quicker-opinion
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    If you ever had an interest in Guilty Gear Strive, thanks to the new ranked matchmaking, there's never been a better time to play!

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    Splitgate 1 Lives on Through Peer-to-Peer Support

    www.splitgate.com /news/splitgate-1-lives-on-through-peer-to-peer-support
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    Battlefield 6 players are crying out for a 'real' server browser, and it's about time we demanded the basic FPS feature that Call of Duty killed

    www.pcgamer.com /games/fps/battlefield-6-players-are-crying-out-for-a-real-server-browser-and-its-about-time-we-demanded-the-basic-fps-feature-that-call-of-duty-killed/
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    Steam Survey for July 2025 shows Linux approaching 3%

    www.gamingonlinux.com /2025/08/steam-survey-for-july-2025-shows-linux-approaching-3/
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    Evo Las Vegas 2025 wrap-up

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls - Official Beginner's Guide Overview

  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world

    "Bringing your games to other platforms is how you’re going to win" - Circana

    www.thegamebusiness.com /p/bringing-your-games-to-other-platforms
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world
    The New York Times

    Novels and Movies Offer Closure. Video Games Should Too.

    www.nytimes.com /2025/07/18/arts/live-service-fortnite-destiny-anthem.html
  • Games @lemmy.world
    ampersandrew @lemmy.world
    new events in the Subnautica 2 story

    ‘Subnautica 2’ Leaders Say Krafton Sabotaged Game Over Payout

    www.bloomberg.com /news/articles/2025-07-16/-subnautica-2-leaders-say-krafton-sabotaged-game-over-payout