Random video game news... RNG says "Nope"

[Mamoulian War]

I hope you are correct

[kanisatha]

17 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Dang. I was late this time

I canceled all my classes and ran all the way home to beat you!

[Malcador]

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by Malcador

[Lexx]

I'm quite happy that I feel no hype at all for D4. Very likely will not spend any money nor time on it.

[xzar_monty]

On 3/9/2023 at 2:33 AM, Zoraptor said:

That describes about 90% of games journalism opinion pieces about as succinctly as it's possible to do.

Btw, I think it's really interesting that English-speaking games journalism never grew up, so to speak. There have been some well-written pieces, of course, but it's astonishing how rare they have been. On the whole, the print era was probably a little better than the current web era, but even that was never very good[*].

(If anyone wants and manages to prove me wrong, I will be very happy.)

I remember Neil Gaiman making the point that comics were never "taken seriously" as a subject for proper journalism, which I think has been true and probably still is, although I don't follow comics at all anymore. There have been exceptions here, too, one famous one being e e cummings's take on The Krazy Kat comic, and the American critic Gary Groth has done some fine work, but as a rule and as a whole... it's not good.

 

[*] I contributed in the late 1980s, and I think it's fair to say that mostly I maintained the status quo, as far as quality was concerned.

Edited March 12, 2023 by xzar_monty

[Malcador]

On 3/10/2023 at 2:03 PM, Lexx said:

I'm quite happy that I feel no hype at all for D4. Very likely will not spend any money nor time on it.

Strange to feel that way.  But is interesting that they'll have 3 versions of the series running at same time.  Maybe 3 will lose appeal, D2R won't, will have those committed to that as the be all and end all

[Hawke64]

"Games are important because they “grow the economic contribution of Australia’s creative industries”, the report says, and because they can bring new audiences to other more traditional art forms, like classical music. This speaks to the longstanding, limited ways in which games are understood. Their ability to make money and their inherent youthful coolness are championed, but the complex ways in which games are themselves a crucial art form, and made by creators who are themselves artists, remain unacknowledged".

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/mar/06/finally-australia-sees-video-games-are-important-but-it-cant-be-only-because-they-make-money

Interesting but sad.
Just in case, building a career in any creative field is extremely risky, be it game development or novel writing.

---
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/06/videogames-history-rome-expeditions/
If as art, the article above seems fitting. If as products, then Bloomberg does investigative journalism (haven't read personally, but heard of it).
I think, in general, there are enough quality articles, but due to the volume they might be overlooked.

15 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Btw, I think it's really interesting that English-speaking games journalism never grew up, so to speak. There have been some well-written pieces, of course, but it's astonishing how rare they have been. On the whole, the print era was probably a little better than the current web era, but even that was never very good[*].

(If anyone wants and manages to prove me wrong, I will be very happy.)

Edited March 13, 2023 by Hawke64

[Malcador]

Also, if you don't pre-order, Putin wins.

[the_dog_days]

The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure English translation released today. Now all the Trails games up through Trails of Cold Steel 4 are available in English. Azure is the second and final game in the Crossbell arc, and imo the second best Trails game up through CS4.

[BruceVC]

On 3/10/2023 at 9:03 PM, Lexx said:

I'm quite happy that I feel no hype at all for D4. Very likely will not spend any money nor time on it.

If I buy you a copy of DA4 will you play it and say positive things about it in the interests of supporting Bioware?

[BruceVC]

On 3/13/2023 at 4:06 PM, Malcador said:

Also, if you don't pre-order, Putin wins.

Geez thats cynical, they are a  Ukrainian company which is facing a massive Russian  hacking effort

Thats what this message is about, dont distribute the hacked content 

And I know its inconvenient but yes they involved and committed to  a real war and everything  they have faced from Russia is also true

 

 

[Lexx]

42 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

If I buy you a copy of DA4 will you play it and say positive things about it in the interests of supporting Bioware?

No, the only Bioware games that I liked were Mass Effect 1-3. In fact, I didn't play many other games of them, since they usually don't interest me at all.

[bugarup]

21 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Geez thats cynical, they are a  Ukrainian company which is facing a massive Russian  hacking effort

Thats what this message is about, dont distribute the hacked content 

And I know its inconvenient but yes they involved and committed to  a real war and everything  they have faced from Russia is also true

 

Here's the "manifesto" of the leakers.  Cross entitled gamer twąt with ~*regular russian people totally do not condone the war, like at all, you guys, it's just government that's bad, totally*~ fable and you get something noxious to rival fallout in the Zone. 

[BruceVC]

31 minutes ago, bugarup said:

 

Here's the "manifesto" of the leakers.  Cross entitled gamer twąt with ~*regular russian people totally do not condone the war, like at all, you guys, it's just government that's bad, totally*~ fable and you get something noxious to rival fallout in the Zone. 

Another  false reality that these entitled Russian hackers\gamers seem to think that threatening to leak the game will stop people buying it or cause a cancellation. I dont believe that people who download or access hacked gaming information are going to be concerned with legitimately buying the game anyway

I know not only would I never view hacked content but I definitely will be  buying this game irrespective of Russian blackmail.

 

 

[Malcador]

On 3/16/2023 at 5:45 AM, BruceVC said:

Geez thats cynical, they are a  Ukrainian company which is facing a massive Russian  hacking effort

Thats what this message is about, dont distribute the hacked content 

And I know its inconvenient but yes they involved and committed to  a real war and everything  they have faced from Russia is also true

Just parodying some comments of people that seem to think handing GSC money is going to win the war.  Company's response is fine.  The reception of the game will be interesting to see, though.

[MrBrown]

Diablo 4 closed beta started. Hope they fix some of these bugs before release.

 

[Malcador]

Seen people complaining about memory leaks or at least high memory usage anyway. Well, guess this is a proper beta, heh.

[LadyCrimson]

Diablo4 - I have Rhykker's YT stream on (he's playing a Rogue) but so far the early stuff isn't all that interesting to viewer-watch. A  lot of people are stuck in queue, surprise surprise.  

I dunno tho...it reminds me of D3 in the sense that first impression of watching is that it could be one of those games that grows on you/me until you like it quite a bit by the end, but the early sections are meh. Especially if these "events" are the best way to xp. And I still dislike the almost straight down view perspective vs. a bit more tilted. That's just a visual  (like in dungeons with walls, feeling like seeing enemies is really restricted) preference tho. I didn't like it in PoE either (edit: or any game that feels similar viewpoint wise). Although it would annoy me less if you could pull up/out a bit farther.

Edited March 17, 2023 by LadyCrimson

[Keyrock]

This seems very Darksiders, which is not a bad thing.

[HoonDing]

Steam recommendations are killing me

[Mamoulian War]

Maybe Steam does already knows something about you, that you don’t

 

Back to D4. So far the most interesting review on it, which I found was titled: Diablo 4 is the best advertisement for Path of Exile 2.

[Wormerine]

15 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Back to D4.

Looter games are just not for me, but I question how much revelance top down Diablo game has. Specifically: why would I play Diablo4, and not let's say, Destiny2 - a game that has loot grinding, but also fundamentally satisfying gameplay loop (or so I hear).

I like town down RPG's very much, but Diablo is one of those franchises that doesn't really make sense to me as a top down game anymore - it is a game where one controls a single character and clicks on things for them to die - spacial awarness has not been a factor in my limited experience with the genre. It is, by all accounts, an "action-RPG" and those have progressed far in their "action" bit since 90s.

Somewhere between Diablo3&4 I heared a rumor pf cancelled third-person "Dark Souls-like" iteration - and that would be such a logical place to move the IP toward. Not making it soulslike, mind you, but take a peek at how FromSoftware married action and RPG and make something similar for Diablo - grinding dugenons in crunchy, 3rd person combat would be such a more compelling proposition, than this top down clicker.

Still it looks good. I would be interested if it was genre I had any interest in. If there will be an open free weekend, I might jump in, play for an hour or two and get bored, as I do with every Diablo game.

Edited March 19, 2023 by Wormerine

[sorophx]

heard that D4 open beta fried several 3080 Tis, so beware.

as for the Stalker 2 leak, I found out about it on the social network (VK) it happened on, there's a huge thread with screenshots and concept art. not sure what the leakers actually wanted to accomplish with the leak itself, as far as I can tell it's free publicity for the company, as the concept art looks amazing, the map is huge, and it actually makes the game look better than it probably is, so much so that I wouldn't be surprised if the leak was orchestrated by GSC themselves for brownie points 

[marelooke]

On 3/17/2023 at 8:42 AM, bugarup said:

 

Here's the "manifesto" of the leakers.  Cross entitled gamer twąt with ~*regular russian people totally do not condone the war, like at all, you guys, it's just government that's bad, totally*~ fable and you get something noxious to rival fallout in the Zone. 

Didn't it turn out the whole leak had nothing to do with the war situation but was just an attention seeker that even tried to apply for a job at GSC after the fact?

At least I saw this on the Stalker subreddit.

Edited March 20, 2023 by marelooke

[Malcador]

https://www.eurogamer.net/beta-has-become-a-twisted-word-blizzard-responds-to-diablo-4-early-access-feedback

Amusing bitching from this, granted on subreddits populated by subhumans.