Release windows can make or break a game, and they were counter programming Starfield, which they expected to be a bigger deal. I would interpret “a bit of crunch” to be a few weeks rather than the several month death march you hear about in game development all the time.
I agree, it does, and it does. In many cases it’s necessary for the survival of the company once you’ve committed to release dates and marketing expenses. Larian ought to have enough cushion for their next project that requiring it makes even less sense.
I’ve never played a soulslike games because they are a bit intimidating to me. Amy recommendations for soulslikes games to start on or for beginners to the genre?
The magic is similar to Dark Souls 3. I don’t know that it’s any more overtuned or anything, but there’s a lot of fun in finding broken builds, and there are tons of them.
Of the ones I’ve played, Elden Ring. The biggest aid for new players being that if something’s too tough, you just go somewhere easier and come back later. The opening area has a boss roaming a field designed to teach you exactly that lesson.
Yeah, these parts were great but do not require an open world. Contrary to the developer’s comments, having agency or autonomy in a game is not at odds with being linear. More often than not, making a game open world just leads to those problems you pointed out.
I feel like if he were a user, he’d have been caught by now, and losing a brother (iirc) to addiction is a solid enough reason to expect sobriety of him.
As I've gotten older as a player, I have found myself dropping some eras of gaming that I used to be nostalgic for. One of them is the 8-bit era, the NES days. I have played some of the best that system had to offer and I will never say that system didn't have any good games....
There were more than 10 great games on the N64, but you have to put yourself in the context of the late 90s. You excused the horrible controller designed for humans with 3 hands, because you got to play some amazing games, many designed to be played in four player multiplayer. Even if PS1 supported the feature, it may as well not have, since it was rare and required a peripheral no one had. Tony Hawk may have been butchered in some ways, but it wasn’t butchered in the way that every PS1 game without pre-rendered backgrounds was butchered; even at the time, some of us couldn’t stand that floating point rounding problem that made every 3D environment on the PS1 look like you were looking at it under water. I probably had 30 N64 games back in the day, and maybe history doesn’t make as much note about Bomberman 64, Dr. Mario 64, or Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball, but there was nothing like it at the time.
Breath of the Wild’s equivalent to dungeons were the beasts, not the shrines. The activities in the overworld were only the same in that they ended in a shrine, but the things you did to unlock them were generally very different. Half of them aren’t even visible at first. The people who thought that world was empty just didn’t find what was hidden in the negative space.
I’ve been fairly nostalgic for 6th gen consoles lately. Not that it was some magic time for video games, but there were certainly genres that were well represented back then that aren’t so much today, like stealth games, arcade racing games, and campaign first person shooters with co-op and split-screen deathmatch. These days, every multiplayer game is designed to be played forever or not at all, rather than being designed to be fun with friends a handful of times.
Games also came out at a rapid clip, with most sequels coming out only a year later. Sure, some of that was due to crunch that we were oblivious to, but even if that cadence were twice as long, it would still be a huge improvement over development cycles today. Most single player games these days are open world by default, as though that’s the natural goal for all video games, no matter how many of them it’s made worse and no matter how much time and money it takes to make them.
Edit: I was half-awake enough while typing this that I ended up going almost opposite of the prompt, but so much to say that no era was all sunshine and rainbows, so I’ll never be fully nostalgic for any era.
The divine beasts are not identical, though they are shorter than traditionally Zelda dungeons. The overworld has a ton to find; you just didn’t find it.
That came after the purchase, yes. They’re also far less likely to have DRM-free versions of games these days. It destroyed a lot of my reason for shopping there.
Without consumers willing (and able) to make sacrifices (like paying higher prices) to reward good corporate behavior, and to avoid companies with purely short-term profit motivated behavior, this is what we can and should expect.
I think consumers have spoken, at least in part. What money can be made doing this job is more easily made on YouTube.
I get my gaming news from YouTube podcasts, mostly; at least those two do employ people actually doing some of that same type of work. It doesn’t really matter how good Schreier is at his job when I’m not going pay for a Bloomberg subscription and someone else can more cheaply copy the same content and tell me what it said. The video format gives me more of a dialogue with the person who did the work. Plus ads are much more easily defeated on a web page than on YouTube, though they are still partially defeated.
As already leaked, the game is a 6v6 third-person hero-based shooter. Heroes include magicians, robots, creatures, humans, and more. There are currently 19 different heroes, each with different abilities and playstyles that you’d come to expect from a MOBA including ranged, healers, tanks, assassins, etc....
The one from Accursed Farms that set off this entire campaign. It’s not about supporting a game forever. It’s about not killing them intentionally when support ends.
What part of that petition says that it’s to support games indefinitely? It explicitly requests action to protect customers after support ends. That inherently means it won’t be supported indefinitely.
Larian Studios' CEO says, "we did have to do a bit of crunch" making Baldur's Gate 3 (www.eurogamer.net)
Best Soulslike game for beginners?
I’ve never played a soulslike games because they are a bit intimidating to me. Amy recommendations for soulslikes games to start on or for beginners to the genre?
Halo Reach remains a masterpiece of dread - and the greatest prequel story of all time (www.eurogamer.net)
Furiosa director George Miller’s comments on Mad Max game and Hideo Kojima prompt response from Mad Max’s original devs (automaton-media.com)
Trump Pressures Republicans to Pass a Law to Keep Him Out of Jail Forever (www.rollingstone.com)
What are some eras of gaming that you've stopped feeling nostalgic for?
As I've gotten older as a player, I have found myself dropping some eras of gaming that I used to be nostalgic for. One of them is the 8-bit era, the NES days. I have played some of the best that system had to offer and I will never say that system didn't have any good games....
IGN Entertainment acquires Eurogamer, GI, VG247, Rock Paper Shotgun and more (www.gamesindustry.biz)
IGN immediately lays off every non-UK person at their newly bought sites, including some key members like deputy editor Alice Bell (aftermath.site)
Welp, this didn’t take long....
New Details on Valve's New Game 'Deadlock' - Insider Gaming (insider-gaming.com)
As already leaked, the game is a 6v6 third-person hero-based shooter. Heroes include magicians, robots, creatures, humans, and more. There are currently 19 different heroes, each with different abilities and playstyles that you’d come to expect from a MOBA including ranged, healers, tanks, assassins, etc....
Larian Studios has two major games in development and opens new studio in Warsaw (files.catbox.moe)
Source: x.com/larianstudios/status/1792495491256664211
The System Shock remake arrives on consoles with its retro modern magic intact (www.eurogamer.net)
UK petition of "Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state" just got thrown back to the Government
I just received this email saying that the response “did not respond directly to the request of the petition”...