Halo Infinite’s campaign was mildly enjoyable and the grappling hook was a small idea that was fun. But, the amount of money they spent to achieve that “mildly enjoyable” game was staggering.

Indie developers couldn’t afford those systems to begin with, so there was nothing to cut. Then, some of their games got popular, and only a free of them still make boxed sets.

Don’t forget AAA is turning to so many F2P experiences.

The bit I couldn’t handle is, it’s a first person game with a less accessible “detective vision” where guards fill their detection meter super fast.

You could do fun stuff if you already knew the level layout and guard patrols, but exploring creatively without opening dark vision every 8 feet caused you to run into a guard and suddenly it’s a chaos run. The combat was not fun enough to dedicate efforts to that.

I think the moment where I stopped playing was when I was perched on an awning above the guards, and they still spotted me. Often, a conceit of stealth game verticality is that guards don’t look up very far.

Compare to Hitman: If you trespass, a guy escorts you out. If someone sees through your disguise, they chase after you with questions, not bullets. If one person sees you act illegally, they try to arrest you and you can grab the gun. With basic awareness, you can often prevent escalation to gunshots fired and backup called.

My iPhone battery has survived a surprising amount of time, and I’m going to guess that’s because of Apple imposing its own researched limits on battery charging based on what it sees from my usage.

That could mean it’s sometimes lying when it says it’s at “100%”.

I definitely wouldn’t count Game Pass streaming as an option to validate PC gaming; since that can run on old Android Phones too. Plus, many of the games are only going to support controller, and you need to upgrade to Ultimate to get access.

I admit I’d forgotten about EAP and U+; to my knowledge they’re pretty unpopular because of their cost-benefit ratio.

The gargantuan margin of error there basically means it’s no different from the nebulous phrasing I put.

I’m sorry, what? Windows yes, I used PC Game Pass for a while before swearing off Xbox. But for all its emulation advances, Linux has always had huge struggles running UWP apps, which accounts for everything on Game Pass. Even on Windows, Game Pass isn’t always the best experience compared to just using a console.

How about we equate the nebulous uncertainty of those claims, since piracy arguments never have reliable motivator data.

“Piracy might not decrease sales. In fact it might increase them.”

Besides plug and play safety as mentioned, two other cool things:

• Monthly Netflix-style rental service. For people who want to try a lot of games to find their niche, PS+ and Game Pass are great.
• Sleep mode. Being able to pause a game for days on end is incredibly convenient. PCs have attempted to have this feature, but very inconsistently, and it often means you cannot web browse when finished playing.

A friend of mine linked me to one called Straftat that seems fun. It’s built around small maps and 1v1 fights.

I’m enjoying Marvel Midnight Suns. It has very fun combat tactics, I probably should turn up the difficulty but I love flinging soldier at each other.

I just wish it turned down the social elements a little bit. The game feels like it was a fan fiction dream of its writers and so you spend time going to a book club with Blade or having your supporting comments rejected by turbo-grump Captain Marvel. It’s also hard to absorb drama behind a premise such as “People can get perma-hypnotized.”

I have not played Sekiro, but I have played an indie knockoff called Kanagi Usagi, so I’m basing my understanding on that.

From how it felt, the health bars are a decoration and the real boss health is poise. I get what they were going for, but it causes a lot of stress for any interruption like healing or long enemy attacks that cause their poise to regenerate, feeling like your effort and time was wasted.

A game I liked better in every respect was Another Crab’s Treasure. You build poise even just by hold-blocking, but your “shield” is a limited resource; one you can choose to invest in with RES. It keeps the idea of encouraging you to keep pressure, by building poise damage on regular attacks, but also punishes you for dodge-rolling as a default for every attack (you’ll never get a “capsize”). And, you still get the reward factor of parries if you release block at the perfect time.

And yeah, ACT is a bit easier; but I’d say its chosen level of difficulty made it a more enjoyable game.

I hope they don’t remember the Alexander raids too fondly. Even when I’ve done one before, understanding and remembering the specific goals is infuriating, for myself and all the other players involved.

It’s okay to have something complicated, as long as it has diegetic meaning that makes sense to players quickly.

I’ve been saying for a while that the best thing that can happen to standard, microtransaction-free, singleplayer video games is: An increase in the US Minimum Wage.

Sadly, that doesn’t help international markets as much. I really wish we could get rid of key resellers so that games sold somewhere like Africa can be fairly measured out in terms of loaves of bread, not US dollars.

I really appreciated learning how much Immersive Sim is in Indiana Jones.

You get a hazy overhead map and need to navigate lots of hidden entrances, presented through verticality, exploring to find valuables. You can win in combat through good reflexes, but once surrounded your only option is to run. There’s no detective vision, and it instead relies on vocal barks where guards chatter or cough or sneeze often enough to remind you where they are.

The stealth isn’t fully on par, since you’re low on gadgets and darkness doesn’t seem to do a lot, but it’s there. I got the same sense of glee as Soulslike games when I take a long circuit to some door, unlock it, and it leads back to a common area, providing me a new shortcut.

Is that with Steam’s “recent off-topic activity” system turned on, or off?

Steam introduced something where if they see a large scale of reviews in a short period that express thoughts unrelated to the game itself, they exclude those reviews from the default view of the page.

Considering Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is coming to PlayStation (Bethesda, owned by MS), it’s obviously no longer Microsoft’s goal to keep to themselves.

I don’t think the “has no games” argument matters much for either console anymore. It’s now more about Japanese devs releasing on PlayStation purely out of familiarity (eg, Final Fantasy), and which monthly subscription you like more.

Considering how simple its premise is, Another Crab’s Treasure seems pretty basic, like its story doesn’t have much left, at several points. People online gave some takes that four boss fights from the end, they thought each one would be the final boss.

Far Cry 3 also did this well. You finish the skill tree, do the last few missions where the increased power slides the difficulty down…and then it turns out you unlock a whole other island to make use of your full ability tree in every encounter.

Ending B was absolutely just padding.

There’s maybe a few segments where it’s interesting to see 9S’s perspective, but so many other scenes that weren’t bot-specific.

Somewhat off topic, I had an idea for a slightly cheesy visual novel:

You play as a woman who has relatively large breasts. The game is entirely first person and you never actually see her, just people acting in oafish ways around her as she desperately tries to make a professional career.

Curious if that would sound silly/interesting to some people.