Spawn_of_Apathy

I could see gamepass staying, being more like EA Play where stuff doesn’t go there for like a year. 

At this point why do we even care if Phil does an interview? I mean whatever, Phil sounds like a nice, regular guy that likes playing games. Meanwhile the studios have fuck all for leadership, most looking like a shadow of what they were in the Xbox and Xbox 360 era, and executives over him at MS don’t give a shit about being “nice”. All Phil brings is platitudes. 

1 hour ago, best3444 said:

I just want Fable. 

I also want Fable, but I have little faith in the game being even close in quality and content to the last 3 main games. 

Is any studio under MS capable of making a coherent, finished game?? How the fuck is every studio struggling so hard? 

On 5/6/2024 at 11:14 AM, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

On-set photo of David Corenswet as Superman:

 

take your time, Superman. Nothing pressing that needs your immediate attention. 
 

some of the memes for this image have been great. lol 

Love modern gaming news. An announcement of an announcement. Yay!

52 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

 

It would have been a very different race if Perez collected a few cars into turn 1. Watching that replay he is so lucky that he didn't take out Max.

Max’s reaction in the cool down room was priceless when seeing that replay. 

On 5/4/2024 at 7:16 PM, AbsolutSurgen said:

The dive bomb by Hamilton in the sprint race was over-the-top. How does he not get a significant penalty?

Yet alonso gets a penalty for forcing Sainz wide. He also got more penalty points than Stroll who slammed into another driver causing another collision and ruining the races of two other drivers.  
 

the consistency is not there. 

19 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Great race by Norris.  It's fantastic to see McLaren close the gap with RBR.

Indeed. There was a part of me that was hoping something would happen where Noris would be unlucky, still podium snd keep the meme going. I had always wanted Noris to win an F1 championship without having ever won a grand prix. But I am really happy for him. The well timed safety car may have been the difference maker it was far from the only factor that led to that victory by Noris. Great job by McLaren for their upgrades and by Noris for showing mastery of by all accounts a very difficult track. 

Oh a VR Batman game. I may try that out. 

Love it when creators are so far off the pulse of what the issue is, basically blaming players for their mismanaged mess. 
 

Starfield wasn’t different enough. And what was done just like past BGS games was done equally as bad or worse. Whether it is the engine or design philosophy and leadership the game feels like it was 10-15 years old. And in a way where the game feels like a purposefully crafted throwback. At best this game felt like a lateral step for the company. It some areas it felt like a massive step backwards.  They tried to make something they’ve never made before by making it exactly how they’ve made everything else. 
 

It looks like they spent the majority of their time and budget on 4k models and textures of things, not even character models. I get the feeling they kept back peddling, cutting, and settling so much to the point the game feels like it had barely any ambition at all.

We haven’t found the new archetype yet, but so far the DLC seems pretty good. Quite a few changes since we last played. Some new visual effects in the game …or maybe fixing bugs that prevented them from happening before. Some rebalancing. Firestorm mod no longer seems to have as strong a vortex effect. It used to keep all but bosses from moving, including your party members. It could even pull them off a world stone. lol

The game didn’t feel any harder on Apocalypse … at least not until our first boss encounter. There we would finally feel the reduced damage reduction. I hope we get more mobile bosses in this DLC. I find them more interesting than ones where just stand in place and just pump damage into until it dies, with just a little dodging in place. 
 

I think we bugged out an aberration in a dungeon call the Emissary. I don’t think it knew how to target us properly and pretty much just let us beat on it while it slowly moved around.  

On 4/26/2024 at 7:55 PM, SuperSpreader said:

360 succeeded because of COD becoming popular on it

 

Sony started buying COD exclusivity PS4 days and the downtrend started for Microsoft

Uncle Phil wasn’t as cut throat as his predecessor and didn’t like the practice of buying exclusives or exclusive content. I guess Sony thought MS would just allow Playstation to keep buying the premium game industry out from under them until Xbox was dissolved. So congrats Sony, you awoke a $2T company to take the video game industry serious again. 

If my Tv wasnt less than 2 years old I’d strongly consider this. But I don’t need to upgrade right now. 

I was sort of like these people. Destiny 2 being my most played game every year. 
 

I kind of broke free around June/July last year and haven’t played it since. Ive kind of just grown a little weary of developers increasing the grind in games to extend or boost engagement numbers, primarily so they can keep advertising their in game shop of micro transactions. Their community managers may make posts telling people to take breaks, but the way leadership is having the devs design the grinds and fomo they know they have a game that is screaming at players “it’s never ok to not play”. 
 

Getting a gaming PC really helped. Expensive, sure, but it has seemingly sparked in me an interest in playing other stuff. If for no other reason to be able to crank up the graphics and play at 60+fps and bask in the beauty and performance. But I have gotten into some smaller titles or playing with an occasional mod to make a game experience better that wouldn’t be possible if still on a console. I kind if feel more like I did in regards to gaming 20-25 years ago. 

15 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I'm not sure what a "serious game" is.  Most games I play are mostly fantastical -- robotic dinosaurs, paranormal evets, futuristic aliens, romanticised history, unrealistic tech and over-the-top violence. 

If you go back 10, years and look at the characters in most video games that were attempting to have realistic graphics.  Most of the characters were made to look young and objectively attractive.

Mass Effect -- Every single woman and alien woman had a thin waist, big hips and armour that contoured around their breasts.  And facially, they were modelled to have traditional female beauty.  Male characters were all buff with square jaws.  That was the norm in virtually all video games of the era.

Flash forward to 2023/2024.  Something like Horizon: Forbidden West -- most of the characters are either overweight or beanpole thin.  No muscular dudes (except maybe the chief of the Tenakh).  No women with the exaggerated hourglass figure.

Same thing with commercials.  10-years ago, most commercials were filled with objectively attractive people -- remember how people used to say "sex sells".  Today, not so much.

We could debate whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, but let's not pretend it hasn't happened.

I think it has been slowly going that way for a while. It also seems to coincide with the gender divide among gamers closing. We are not quite at 50/50, but we are getting closer and closer. There’s also more and more women working in game design and game development. 
 

I can’t imagine trying to make characters “sexy” will ever go away. But I can’t help but feel the idea of having to make a character look like an object to lust after as a way to pander to a certain demographic is not as necessary as it once was. At least not in the US. 
 

Maybe age has something to do with it too. That being the older you get less you need an exaggeratedly proportioned woman to see somebody attractive. I just saw a statistic that only 24% of gamers are under 18. I don’t know about you, but I have a much more broad level of attraction to the female body than I did at 14. It’s possible the average age of gamers in South Korea is much younger (as an average) than here in the US so targeting the gaze of the 14-21 year old boys makes more sense still. 

2 hours ago, best3444 said:

When playing I didn't think anything was sexualized or weird. She is in a tight futuristic outfit but so what lol. People are so fucking stupid. 

there’s apparently an outfit made to look like bare flesh that apparently removes your shield for the privilege of making her look naked. 

22 hours ago, best3444 said:

 

That's a big one for gamepass. Phenomenal game. 

Unsurprising. They had Jedi Fallen Order in gamepass around a year after release. 

19 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Again, that's the point these guys are making in the video. They are concerned that Video game companies are taking exactly the opposite lesson from this data and are looking to double down on Live service games in the hope that can stumble upon a Fortnite or Roblox type game. game devs don't want a Spiderman 2 or Jedi Survivor... great single player games that people play for a bit, then put down and never touch again. They want GTA V type games where they can monetize the fuck out it for a decade. 

some publishers seekingly still want a Destiny even though it has been widely common knowledge for a long time how expensive that model is to run to keep players interested, hooked or regularly coming back. PvP only us much easier, but PvE requires so much more. 

Kind of reminds me when a whole lot of PS3 owners left their PS3 on running Folding at Home, myself included. This was obviously more involved in player participation, but still a neat way to crowd fund actual research. 

I do jot envy whatever studio agrees to do it. 

14 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I don't think you can make that inference from that article.  I suspect it will have a variety of modes for different games, just like DLSS or FSR.

Probably. I got it from the mention of 2mm of added latency when upscaling to 4k from 1080p. 

On 4/12/2024 at 11:53 PM, Brick said:

Seems Bungie was indeed holding some things close to their chest to save for later.

or they have had to pivot so hard and burn the midnight oil to get more things added to bolster this expansion. I mean Bungie is not afraid to promise a feature that the team hadn’t even started work on and takes nearly a year to release. lol They are going so hard on finally delivering everything people have said they’ve been disappointed Destiny has been lacking each expansion Bungie is finally doing it all in this final expansion. It almost makes tou think “they could have been doing this the whole time.” 
 

I worry about this expansion day one for people jumping in. I just cannot see where the game isn’t a broken, buggy mess with the amount of stuff they are quickly cramming in at the last minute to boost interest and preorders. 

15 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Sony’s PS5 Pro is real and developers are getting ready for it - The Verge

WWW.THEVERGE.COM

---

Sony is pushing developers to focus on ray tracing.

 

So Sony’s resolution upscaling is targeting DLSS Performance mode. 

1 hour ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Ubisoft has been using the term Season Pass consistently on almost all their big releases since 2015.

They have frequently had missions or other content locked behind preorders or premium versions.  Usually, these become buyable with "Ubisoft points" after a couple of months (the points you earn from in game achievements).  In the past, the missions are superfluous to the game -- the equivalent of a minor side mission, with rewards that are nothing special.

Ubisoft is also known for adding tons of post-launch content for free in their games to keep you engaged, in addition to the paid DLC.

The "Wrath of the Druids" and "Siege of Paris" DLC from AC: Valhalla were both well worth playing -- and while I wouldn't pay full price for them, they were included in the Gold version I bought for 30-40% off on Black Friday,  I would expect similar things with SW: Outlaws.

I guess I never really noticed since the last Ubisoft games I bought and played I did so after all content had released and the complete edition of the game was heavily discounted.