Honestly wouldn't worry about it. Anego Studios (the studio behind Vintage Story, and bankrolling Hytale as well) have a considerable track record of mod support, and they host the mods on their site as well, which makes integrating and keeping mods up to date dead simple.
just thought I should chime in here, as another first world country gamer. Go ahead and pirate the fuck outta games, they were made to be played. Anyone genuinely mad about pirating is someone who deluded themselves into believing they're currently a down-on-their-luck future billionaire.
Games are better when more people enjoy them, and the only way to do that is by lowering the barrier to entry. It's the same with manga, anime and most of the other "booms" that have occurred since the start of the 2000's. They were all started by piracy, or in the case of AI, legitimatized theft. Only real difference is who's doing the stealing, the 'poors' or the currently billion dollar companies.
You are morally obligated to pirate whatever the fuck you want until you can purchase it, if you want, or until the product comes to you (i.e., it's priced reasonably for your region, and the service/product brought to you is of acceptable quality).
I mean sure, I guess that comparison holds up, if you completely ignore the reality of modern walled gardens, and disassociate any difference between a console, which is just hardware, the exact same shit that's in every PC, and actual vehicles, which have different chassis, engines, suspension, tires, and controls, because they do fundamentally different things.
A Switch, Switch 2, or Wii are about as different to PCs and any machine that plays games, for that matter as a convection oven is to an air fryer. They're the same goddamned thing, one just does it on a larger scale, has more capacity, and typically isn't governed by the brand maker on what you can do with the damned thing.
Comparing Nintendo vs PCs to ATVs to cars is about as mentally braindead as you can possibly get. What, exactly, can a Wii or Switch do that a PC cannot? I'm presuming you're referring to it's gimmicks like the motion controls for the Wii, or the detachable controllers for the Switch. At least, I hope it's the joycons, notable for their designed stickdrift failure, and Nintendo's refusal to resolve the issue with customers.
Otherwise, I would struggle to think of anything different from the Switch when comparing it to even a Steam Deck. It certainly struggles with performance when compared to the Steam Deck. Comparing on a price point, the Switch does technically win out, but again, lowest common denominator and lowest barrier to entry in the gaming industry. What else does the switch even have, outside of people buying games because of brand appeal? Seriously, I'm genuinely struggling to think of a single point Nintendo innovates on, and it's certainly not their games.
I could go off into a whole segment of their games, but most have, like I have said previously, been regurgitating innovations other companies and games have made.
Separately, the gimmicks the Wii and Switch have are arguably the worst parts of the console's designs. Motion controls that are so bad they had to make an extension that slightly improves the tracking performance. Switch's most notable feature was the two controllers that detached and could act like a single controller, or act as two half-assed controllers, so you could get stick drift on your controllers twice as fast!
Now, to address emulation; that's the whole fucking point of emulation. You can literally do the same thing a switch can do if you emulate the software shell that the walled garden requires all games to be built within. On older consoles you could argue that games were optimized for their hardware, and ran better as a result of optimizing for the hardware, but many ports, to or from consoles have effectively proven that optimization only goes so far and hardware is a hard limitation on what can be done.
If you can emulate a console's game, you know, the whole fucking point of a video game console, which is to play games..... Kinda answers the question.
Now, as far as your anecdotal evidence of you and everyone you know owning a Switch; that honestly says more about you than it does about the Switch. I can't imagine the mental gymnastics needed to justify paying close to half the price of a new PC at the time just for the pleasure of playing the 3d platformer, or the dungeon crawler, or the relaxing life sim game. Nope, never seen a type of game like that outside of Nintendo. Nope, only Nintendo can come up with such interesting concepts as 2D, mostly linear Metroidvania! (/s, in case your IQ is lower than the price of a secondhand DS game.)
TlDr; Either you're a corporate plant, a braindead shill on the same level as Harman Smith, or so genuinely casual you consider FIFA to be your most niche game you play. Think for yourself, and I encourage you to actually compare a Nintendo game, and find one gameplay mechanic invented in the past 3-4 years that was actually new. And no, "throwing spheres to capture creatures" is not a new gameplay innovation.
Y'know, I was gonna rant about how bad Nintendo's gotten, but I figured keeping it short and sweet is better. I absolutely do insult people buying and praising Nintendo games. These are the same type of people who will turn around and say that PC gaming is too expensive, when they've probably spent triple that in games on the Wii, Switch, and Switch 2 now. Nintendo has become the lowest entry into the gaming ecosphere, which is sad for a number of reasons, but it has absolutely become the home for the lowest common denominator of people, where ideas from the industry at large are regurgitated with brand labels and people praise them because they haven't seen the original form of those ideas.
I see what you're saying, but I still don't see how this gives any merit to the lawsuit, as I'm especially dubious about the multiple lawsuits on valve in a short timeframe. Note how one of the points that the lawsuit is making is that Valve doesn't verify user's age, so that is why they're being sued; for letting children gamble.
It's a blatant move made by wealthy CEOs who have dirt to either hit valve in one of its more profitable money making centers, or fall in line with demanding PII from customers for a surveillance state.
Just to go back to the gymnastics you've set up, I'd also like to point out that I've seen kids get their hands on plenty of things they aren't "supposed" to, like cigarettes, other nicotine products, drugs, and many more. While it isn't great that safeguards aren't in place for children, that isn't exactly a great trade-off for turning into fucking North Korea.
There are solutions for these problems; Better paid, less overworked parents would have more time and mental bandwidth to be involved with their children and be better parents. More strict government regulation (that doesn't involve dissolving personal freedoms even further than they already have) regarding dangerous practices for its citizens.
And just to get ahead of any insistence that this lawsuit is a good idea, let me give you some examples of what could be done besides giving PII:
laws that more broadly categorize gambling
laws that heavily tax gambling profits (from the companies)
laws that ban gambling outright (not as likely to succeed, but it is an option)
Final note here, but if someone is determined to do something, it's going to be very hard to stop them if they're not under supervision; think of various high profile murders that occur in the US regularly. Hell, think of all the school shootings! A kid isn't able to legally own or buy a firearm, hell purchasing a firearm is about the most strict customer filtering you can get outside of more specialized goods, and kids still get their hands on them all the time, so clearly putting the onus on a business to filter it's customers when it can't even see them is going to be much more difficult to enforce.
I'm not sure about what you mean by video (using cameras, or posting videos) But I did check out Teamspeak, as I used to use it a long time ago, and it's a nice medium between ease of use products like discord and security minded folks who use things like Matrix.
Either way, Teamspeak did add screen sharing, and the cost to host a server is about the price of a nitro sub. That's if you don't self host, which is always an option and makes things free.
It's probably going to be the best option to convince my friends to finally leave discord's ecosystem. Haven't liked it since they started adding in bs like quests and the shop, it's only a matter of time before it enshittifies so bad my friend group will be looking for a way to jump ship.
nobody needs to see that heteronormative degenerate filth. Kids are playing that game.
Wow, didn't expect someone speaking so loudly about same sex relationships to be so bigoted, but all walks of life, I guess. Either way, I seriously hope you have no interaction with anyone below the age of 30 personally or professionally.
I'm not gonna even get into how romance is just a part of a story, and if you read anything that has romance in it, fanfic or not, it has just as much a right to exist.
I will however rip into you pointing out franchises for 'heteronormative degenerate filth'. First, the game isn't about you. No game ever is, nor ever will be. If that is a moral failing of a game, I suggest you start making games yourself or stop playing them, because any other expectation is really stupid beyond compare.
I will concede that games often lure you into self inserting yourself into the main character, as JRPGs tend to do. But at some point, the illusion has to break, and I can't really imagine how you'd get mad if you're self inserting into Zidane (FF IX protagonist) or even Leon or Cloud ( I hope you know enough about franchises you're trash talking to know who they are).
Also, to complain about the Assassin's Creed franchise of all things is so braindead I have to question if you're a plant. You're saying children are playing a game whose whole premise is premediated murder, and the romance scenes are what you're up in arms about? That is honestly beneath anything that breathes to acknowledge, and really shows that critical thinking is a skill.
Do note, however, that if children are playing a game with mature content in it? That's the parent's responsibility as an individual to care for their child. Games aren't obligated to include or exclude content to suit children, nor even whiny little shits like yourself.
That's how the world works buddy. Sorry if you stepped outside your echo chamber, but romance is a part of stories as much as romance will always be a genre of books.
And everyone's gonna judge you if you say stupid shit like this. 'Psychological evaluation', as you put it, is just extrapolating. Or, if you need smaller words, guessing that since you're dumb enough to completely dismiss romance as being worthy of including in a plot, you might be dumb enough to be a bible thumping Karen, or part of Collective Shout.
If you really think being a bigot is okay, I don't really know what else to tell you. Bye, don't let the door hit you on the way out? You don't have many friends?
But I have voiced that I don’t think this route/configuration of leadership will work.
Could you elaborate on this, beyond the one sentence? The rest of your comment makes it clear that you weren't aware, and still aren't about much of what was going on with SKG. Given that you don't have a clear understanding of what the timeline of SKG was, that does leave room for doubt that you understand the initiative. I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt, so please explain what you meant.
how to tell someone hasn't gone to school lol. Learn to read loser. Here's the Wikipedia link but I doubt you'll be bothered to read it. Gerrymandering has been a fact of life in the U.S. for a long time.
I will heavily disagree with you on your evaluation of Sly 4. The higher fidelity models doesn't really add much to the characters that you couldn't glean in prior entries in the series, and really only serves to give the characters a more plastic style all while minimizing the features that made them so memorable - their cartoonish aesthetic and stylized design. Not much changed on the design front for any of the major cast, besides more detail regarding their costumes.
I will admit that more details on the smaller bits of their costume would be nice in the older entries, but compromising the style and aesthetic is a much worse tradeoff for what was gained.
There's many other people evaluating the level design in Sly 4 so I won't go into that too much, but suffice to say, Sly 2 has comparable level design, and some are better in my personal opinion, but Sly 3 has the best level design of the franchise. None of those level designs were hindered or empowered by graphical capabilities. The only part that would have a noticeable impact, if anything, would be the post processing effects from some abilities in Sly 4, but I don't really think those added that much to the experience, as most are gimmicks and costume based, meaning they are only used to solve puzzles and don't play any further part in your arsenal except when the game specifically calls for those abilities.
Now I don't disagree that modern computing power could make the series much better, but AAA has this tunnel vision on graphical fidelity, when the indie scene has proved time and again, style always has and always will trump substance.
Ratchet and Clank made the transition successfully because they didn't overblow the graphical fidelity on Clank, it simply looks like a higher quality model of his early iterations, and has been made easier due to the armor and other sci-fi bits of technology in the series, as the genre scales better with the raw fidelity that most AAA developers pursue than other franchises.
Doesn't really help either that the first step that the Sly franchise took into this modern era was spearheaded by a third party studio. I'm not gonna bash Sanzaru that much, as it's clear they had to put in a lot of work to approach Sony and Sucker Punch to even get permission to work on the franchise, and it shows in the humor of their mission design, although they were uncertain of themselves and it shows. So not only was Sanzaru dealing with the difficult position of having the newest entry of a beloved franchise, but also coming up with ways to modernize the gameplay and graphics in a franchise almost iconified in the early 2000's comic and cartoon aesthetic.
It's clear they had more to juggle than could have honestly been expected of them, not the least of which that the franchise had been dead in the water for 8 years at that point, as the industry had slowed to a crawl after the creep of design scope and the upscaling of the industry caused much of the workflow to stagnate or recursion in on itself.
Nah, YouTube recently updated their site to slow down your browser and PC to a halt if they catch you using a block. First time it got past UBlockOrigin for me, but doesn't change the fact that it's malware.
Thought it might be related to that, since I had to look it up to figure out what the problem was.
I've played the game while it was in early access, and now that I've played quite a bit (not all) of the game, I'd like to give my thoughts for anyone stumbling on this or keeping an eye on the game and trying to make a decision.
First, the main feature of the game, beyond the aesthetic of an environmentalist version of post-apocalyptic world, is the airships. It's a mobile base that is both a vehicle and where you do everything. The idea is nothing new, but the execution is done pretty well, in my opinion. There's basic rooms, but you can unlock more rooms through exploration and research, which can result in some pretty interesting base designs and configurations.
As far as a survival crafting game goes, it doesn't do too bad to stand out in the sea of similar games, as the game originally began based around not having combat in it at all, but has since adopted some combat mechanics due to popular demand. The environmentalist messaging and themes are very obvious, and it jumped on the bandwagon fairly early on, before the themes got too worn out, so it isn't stale storytelling at the very least.
Now, for the changes between early access and 1.0, I will say it's pretty drastic. I played the very early versions of early access, as well as most major updates that came out between then and now, and the difference is striking. First, in the beginning, you'd have to use a deck mounted extractor (think resource gathering laser tool) to gather materials, and you'd be able to acquire a portable version of the tool later on. In the 1.0 version of the game, that is turned on its head, where you get a portable one first, with deck mounted ones that don't require energy later (for automation and convivence purposes).
Resources feel much more in demand in the 1.0 version, as there is more to craft and upgrade, so you'll be gathering and going through materials just as quickly. This is partly because most of the gameplay in early access involved exploring, with the underdust locations being the primary story progression areas. This meant that while you were exploring around, you'd be collecting materials passively, and because of this, you'd end up with tons of materials whenever you'd normally pivot to upgrading your base - right after getting a upgrade, or needing space for new facilities.
The 1.0 version is much more streamlined in that story and story required equipment is all marked out for you, meaning you can beeline from one place to the next without much wasted time; great if you're in a hurry or a journalist, but it does hurt the pacing in terms of resource scarcity. Not to say that resources are any more or less rare, they're very abundant, in fact. However, due to adding some new resources that are used interspersed throughout the crafting process for more complex items means that you will always have a deficiency somewhere.
I mentioned progression and story being streamlined in 1.0, but in truth it has had a massive overhaul, with proper zones to halt early players wandering into areas they do not have the tools to actually make use of, and to segment story into decent chunks. The game has more side grades for equipment than before, and they add interesting choices for gameplay, although due to the late adoption of combat, the upgrade system for combat is relatively shallow.
From my perspective, it was a promising survival game that focused more on base building and dealing with size constraints, and the interplay with base building, which has developed into a proper, feature complete game. The gameplay may not be for everyone, but it is clear it had a vision for what the game would be, and successfully achieved that goal.
Based on what I've played before the 1.0 release, I know that there is more content and mechanics to encounter, so I'll reply with an update once I've properly finished the game and can give a more comprehensive review.
If they paid based on results, you'd be in sales. Everywhere else, you're a wage slave. On the hourly side, they try to wring every second of work they can out of you, and anything else is a 'loss'. It's the same for salaried employees, the measurement is just different. Instead of work efficiency, it's work hours. The rest is just politics.
man, some of those comments really got under my skin.
Like, they were so insensitive to the issue and dismissive it was honestly pretty alarming. Like they couldn't understand why you can't just go and buy a copy of an unpopular NES game, or why academic study is even a good thing. Like, these are the illiterate, inbred stereotypes that resent having to do book reports because 'they don't read good'. It'd be comical if it wasn't alarming.
Honestly wouldn't worry about it. Anego Studios (the studio behind Vintage Story, and bankrolling Hytale as well) have a considerable track record of mod support, and they host the mods on their site as well, which makes integrating and keeping mods up to date dead simple.
just thought I should chime in here, as another first world country gamer. Go ahead and pirate the fuck outta games, they were made to be played. Anyone genuinely mad about pirating is someone who deluded themselves into believing they're currently a down-on-their-luck future billionaire.
Games are better when more people enjoy them, and the only way to do that is by lowering the barrier to entry. It's the same with manga, anime and most of the other "booms" that have occurred since the start of the 2000's. They were all started by piracy, or in the case of AI, legitimatized theft. Only real difference is who's doing the stealing, the 'poors' or the currently billion dollar companies.
You are morally obligated to pirate whatever the fuck you want until you can purchase it, if you want, or until the product comes to you (i.e., it's priced reasonably for your region, and the service/product brought to you is of acceptable quality).
I mean sure, I guess that comparison holds up, if you completely ignore the reality of modern walled gardens, and disassociate any difference between a console, which is just hardware, the exact same shit that's in every PC, and actual vehicles, which have different chassis, engines, suspension, tires, and controls, because they do fundamentally different things.
A Switch, Switch 2, or Wii are about as different to PCs and any machine that plays games, for that matter as a convection oven is to an air fryer. They're the same goddamned thing, one just does it on a larger scale, has more capacity, and typically isn't governed by the brand maker on what you can do with the damned thing.
Comparing Nintendo vs PCs to ATVs to cars is about as mentally braindead as you can possibly get. What, exactly, can a Wii or Switch do that a PC cannot? I'm presuming you're referring to it's gimmicks like the motion controls for the Wii, or the detachable controllers for the Switch. At least, I hope it's the joycons, notable for their designed stickdrift failure, and Nintendo's refusal to resolve the issue with customers.
Otherwise, I would struggle to think of anything different from the Switch when comparing it to even a Steam Deck. It certainly struggles with performance when compared to the Steam Deck. Comparing on a price point, the Switch does technically win out, but again, lowest common denominator and lowest barrier to entry in the gaming industry. What else does the switch even have, outside of people buying games because of brand appeal? Seriously, I'm genuinely struggling to think of a single point Nintendo innovates on, and it's certainly not their games.
I could go off into a whole segment of their games, but most have, like I have said previously, been regurgitating innovations other companies and games have made.
Separately, the gimmicks the Wii and Switch have are arguably the worst parts of the console's designs. Motion controls that are so bad they had to make an extension that slightly improves the tracking performance. Switch's most notable feature was the two controllers that detached and could act like a single controller, or act as two half-assed controllers, so you could get stick drift on your controllers twice as fast!
Now, to address emulation; that's the whole fucking point of emulation. You can literally do the same thing a switch can do if you emulate the software shell that the walled garden requires all games to be built within. On older consoles you could argue that games were optimized for their hardware, and ran better as a result of optimizing for the hardware, but many ports, to or from consoles have effectively proven that optimization only goes so far and hardware is a hard limitation on what can be done.
If you can emulate a console's game, you know, the whole fucking point of a video game console, which is to play games..... Kinda answers the question.
Now, as far as your anecdotal evidence of you and everyone you know owning a Switch; that honestly says more about you than it does about the Switch. I can't imagine the mental gymnastics needed to justify paying close to half the price of a new PC at the time just for the pleasure of playing the 3d platformer, or the dungeon crawler, or the relaxing life sim game. Nope, never seen a type of game like that outside of Nintendo. Nope, only Nintendo can come up with such interesting concepts as 2D, mostly linear Metroidvania! (/s, in case your IQ is lower than the price of a secondhand DS game.)
TlDr; Either you're a corporate plant, a braindead shill on the same level as Harman Smith, or so genuinely casual you consider FIFA to be your most niche game you play. Think for yourself, and I encourage you to actually compare a Nintendo game, and find one gameplay mechanic invented in the past 3-4 years that was actually new. And no, "throwing spheres to capture creatures" is not a new gameplay innovation.
Y'know, I was gonna rant about how bad Nintendo's gotten, but I figured keeping it short and sweet is better. I absolutely do insult people buying and praising Nintendo games. These are the same type of people who will turn around and say that PC gaming is too expensive, when they've probably spent triple that in games on the Wii, Switch, and Switch 2 now. Nintendo has become the lowest entry into the gaming ecosphere, which is sad for a number of reasons, but it has absolutely become the home for the lowest common denominator of people, where ideas from the industry at large are regurgitated with brand labels and people praise them because they haven't seen the original form of those ideas.
damn, linux heads are real quiet.
I see what you're saying, but I still don't see how this gives any merit to the lawsuit, as I'm especially dubious about the multiple lawsuits on valve in a short timeframe. Note how one of the points that the lawsuit is making is that Valve doesn't verify user's age, so that is why they're being sued; for letting children gamble.
It's a blatant move made by wealthy CEOs who have dirt to either hit valve in one of its more profitable money making centers, or fall in line with demanding PII from customers for a surveillance state.
Just to go back to the gymnastics you've set up, I'd also like to point out that I've seen kids get their hands on plenty of things they aren't "supposed" to, like cigarettes, other nicotine products, drugs, and many more. While it isn't great that safeguards aren't in place for children, that isn't exactly a great trade-off for turning into fucking North Korea.
There are solutions for these problems; Better paid, less overworked parents would have more time and mental bandwidth to be involved with their children and be better parents. More strict government regulation (that doesn't involve dissolving personal freedoms even further than they already have) regarding dangerous practices for its citizens.
And just to get ahead of any insistence that this lawsuit is a good idea, let me give you some examples of what could be done besides giving PII:
Final note here, but if someone is determined to do something, it's going to be very hard to stop them if they're not under supervision; think of various high profile murders that occur in the US regularly. Hell, think of all the school shootings! A kid isn't able to legally own or buy a firearm, hell purchasing a firearm is about the most strict customer filtering you can get outside of more specialized goods, and kids still get their hands on them all the time, so clearly putting the onus on a business to filter it's customers when it can't even see them is going to be much more difficult to enforce.
I'm not sure about what you mean by video (using cameras, or posting videos) But I did check out Teamspeak, as I used to use it a long time ago, and it's a nice medium between ease of use products like discord and security minded folks who use things like Matrix.
Either way, Teamspeak did add screen sharing, and the cost to host a server is about the price of a nitro sub. That's if you don't self host, which is always an option and makes things free.
It's probably going to be the best option to convince my friends to finally leave discord's ecosystem. Haven't liked it since they started adding in bs like quests and the shop, it's only a matter of time before it enshittifies so bad my friend group will be looking for a way to jump ship.
Wow, didn't expect someone speaking so loudly about same sex relationships to be so bigoted, but all walks of life, I guess. Either way, I seriously hope you have no interaction with anyone below the age of 30 personally or professionally.
I'm not gonna even get into how romance is just a part of a story, and if you read anything that has romance in it, fanfic or not, it has just as much a right to exist.
I will however rip into you pointing out franchises for 'heteronormative degenerate filth'. First, the game isn't about you. No game ever is, nor ever will be. If that is a moral failing of a game, I suggest you start making games yourself or stop playing them, because any other expectation is really stupid beyond compare.
I will concede that games often lure you into self inserting yourself into the main character, as JRPGs tend to do. But at some point, the illusion has to break, and I can't really imagine how you'd get mad if you're self inserting into Zidane (FF IX protagonist) or even Leon or Cloud ( I hope you know enough about franchises you're trash talking to know who they are).
Also, to complain about the Assassin's Creed franchise of all things is so braindead I have to question if you're a plant. You're saying children are playing a game whose whole premise is premediated murder, and the romance scenes are what you're up in arms about? That is honestly beneath anything that breathes to acknowledge, and really shows that critical thinking is a skill.
Do note, however, that if children are playing a game with mature content in it? That's the parent's responsibility as an individual to care for their child. Games aren't obligated to include or exclude content to suit children, nor even whiny little shits like yourself.
That's how the world works buddy. Sorry if you stepped outside your echo chamber, but romance is a part of stories as much as romance will always be a genre of books.
And everyone's gonna judge you if you say stupid shit like this. 'Psychological evaluation', as you put it, is just extrapolating. Or, if you need smaller words, guessing that since you're dumb enough to completely dismiss romance as being worthy of including in a plot, you might be dumb enough to be a bible thumping Karen, or part of Collective Shout.
If you really think being a bigot is okay, I don't really know what else to tell you. Bye, don't let the door hit you on the way out? You don't have many friends?
But yeah, welcome to the real world.
Could you elaborate on this, beyond the one sentence? The rest of your comment makes it clear that you weren't aware, and still aren't about much of what was going on with SKG. Given that you don't have a clear understanding of what the timeline of SKG was, that does leave room for doubt that you understand the initiative. I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt, so please explain what you meant.
We all do.
Where's Mr.Krabs? :(
how to tell someone hasn't gone to school lol. Learn to read loser. Here's the Wikipedia link but I doubt you'll be bothered to read it. Gerrymandering has been a fact of life in the U.S. for a long time.
I will heavily disagree with you on your evaluation of Sly 4. The higher fidelity models doesn't really add much to the characters that you couldn't glean in prior entries in the series, and really only serves to give the characters a more plastic style all while minimizing the features that made them so memorable - their cartoonish aesthetic and stylized design. Not much changed on the design front for any of the major cast, besides more detail regarding their costumes. I will admit that more details on the smaller bits of their costume would be nice in the older entries, but compromising the style and aesthetic is a much worse tradeoff for what was gained. There's many other people evaluating the level design in Sly 4 so I won't go into that too much, but suffice to say, Sly 2 has comparable level design, and some are better in my personal opinion, but Sly 3 has the best level design of the franchise. None of those level designs were hindered or empowered by graphical capabilities. The only part that would have a noticeable impact, if anything, would be the post processing effects from some abilities in Sly 4, but I don't really think those added that much to the experience, as most are gimmicks and costume based, meaning they are only used to solve puzzles and don't play any further part in your arsenal except when the game specifically calls for those abilities.
Now I don't disagree that modern computing power could make the series much better, but AAA has this tunnel vision on graphical fidelity, when the indie scene has proved time and again, style always has and always will trump substance.
Ratchet and Clank made the transition successfully because they didn't overblow the graphical fidelity on Clank, it simply looks like a higher quality model of his early iterations, and has been made easier due to the armor and other sci-fi bits of technology in the series, as the genre scales better with the raw fidelity that most AAA developers pursue than other franchises.
Doesn't really help either that the first step that the Sly franchise took into this modern era was spearheaded by a third party studio. I'm not gonna bash Sanzaru that much, as it's clear they had to put in a lot of work to approach Sony and Sucker Punch to even get permission to work on the franchise, and it shows in the humor of their mission design, although they were uncertain of themselves and it shows. So not only was Sanzaru dealing with the difficult position of having the newest entry of a beloved franchise, but also coming up with ways to modernize the gameplay and graphics in a franchise almost iconified in the early 2000's comic and cartoon aesthetic.
It's clear they had more to juggle than could have honestly been expected of them, not the least of which that the franchise had been dead in the water for 8 years at that point, as the industry had slowed to a crawl after the creep of design scope and the upscaling of the industry caused much of the workflow to stagnate or recursion in on itself.
Nah, YouTube recently updated their site to slow down your browser and PC to a halt if they catch you using a block. First time it got past UBlockOrigin for me, but doesn't change the fact that it's malware. Thought it might be related to that, since I had to look it up to figure out what the problem was.
Pretty sure I have an idea on what your problem might be. Do you typically keep YouTube open or watch videos while playing a game?
I've played the game while it was in early access, and now that I've played quite a bit (not all) of the game, I'd like to give my thoughts for anyone stumbling on this or keeping an eye on the game and trying to make a decision.
First, the main feature of the game, beyond the aesthetic of an environmentalist version of post-apocalyptic world, is the airships. It's a mobile base that is both a vehicle and where you do everything. The idea is nothing new, but the execution is done pretty well, in my opinion. There's basic rooms, but you can unlock more rooms through exploration and research, which can result in some pretty interesting base designs and configurations.
As far as a survival crafting game goes, it doesn't do too bad to stand out in the sea of similar games, as the game originally began based around not having combat in it at all, but has since adopted some combat mechanics due to popular demand. The environmentalist messaging and themes are very obvious, and it jumped on the bandwagon fairly early on, before the themes got too worn out, so it isn't stale storytelling at the very least.
Now, for the changes between early access and 1.0, I will say it's pretty drastic. I played the very early versions of early access, as well as most major updates that came out between then and now, and the difference is striking. First, in the beginning, you'd have to use a deck mounted extractor (think resource gathering laser tool) to gather materials, and you'd be able to acquire a portable version of the tool later on. In the 1.0 version of the game, that is turned on its head, where you get a portable one first, with deck mounted ones that don't require energy later (for automation and convivence purposes). Resources feel much more in demand in the 1.0 version, as there is more to craft and upgrade, so you'll be gathering and going through materials just as quickly. This is partly because most of the gameplay in early access involved exploring, with the underdust locations being the primary story progression areas. This meant that while you were exploring around, you'd be collecting materials passively, and because of this, you'd end up with tons of materials whenever you'd normally pivot to upgrading your base - right after getting a upgrade, or needing space for new facilities.
The 1.0 version is much more streamlined in that story and story required equipment is all marked out for you, meaning you can beeline from one place to the next without much wasted time; great if you're in a hurry or a journalist, but it does hurt the pacing in terms of resource scarcity. Not to say that resources are any more or less rare, they're very abundant, in fact. However, due to adding some new resources that are used interspersed throughout the crafting process for more complex items means that you will always have a deficiency somewhere.
I mentioned progression and story being streamlined in 1.0, but in truth it has had a massive overhaul, with proper zones to halt early players wandering into areas they do not have the tools to actually make use of, and to segment story into decent chunks. The game has more side grades for equipment than before, and they add interesting choices for gameplay, although due to the late adoption of combat, the upgrade system for combat is relatively shallow.
From my perspective, it was a promising survival game that focused more on base building and dealing with size constraints, and the interplay with base building, which has developed into a proper, feature complete game. The gameplay may not be for everyone, but it is clear it had a vision for what the game would be, and successfully achieved that goal.
Based on what I've played before the 1.0 release, I know that there is more content and mechanics to encounter, so I'll reply with an update once I've properly finished the game and can give a more comprehensive review.
I'm looking at picking up the Kingdom Heats bundle, since it recently came to steam, I'm not sure of what else though.
Pretty sure divinity isn't a killstreak.
If they paid based on results, you'd be in sales. Everywhere else, you're a wage slave. On the hourly side, they try to wring every second of work they can out of you, and anything else is a 'loss'. It's the same for salaried employees, the measurement is just different. Instead of work efficiency, it's work hours. The rest is just politics.
man, some of those comments really got under my skin.
Like, they were so insensitive to the issue and dismissive it was honestly pretty alarming. Like they couldn't understand why you can't just go and buy a copy of an unpopular NES game, or why academic study is even a good thing. Like, these are the illiterate, inbred stereotypes that resent having to do book reports because 'they don't read good'. It'd be comical if it wasn't alarming.