One retro game that I think hasn’t really been well-imitated since is called The Last Express. You’re on the last major express train through Europe before World War I.
What sets it apart is both a very vivid art style using rotoscoping of live actors, as well as a real-time gameplay system wherein the NPCs of the train can constantly move around, scoot past you in the car hallways, or even seek you out during certain key events.
I have generally found roguelikes to be too difficult, so if you want a turn-taking, strategic one that leans into the easier side while letting you set up many ridiculous combinations, I enjoy “Backpack Hero”. You get a Resident Evil 4 styled inventory screen, and must arrange/place items for an optimal build. You generally get rewarded for stacking similar items.
Flagging videogamedunkey to add this prediction to his next planned 2028 video about “the upcoming Switch 2”
Sometimes I bitterly wonder if it was humanity’s acceptance of slavery that enabled those large constructions. Things like safe working conditions didn’t exist back then.
Of course, we basically have prison slavery, but I’m sure they’d prefer the products of that labor not be so publicly visible.
Ah yes, TikTok, the land free of censorship. Where you can’t say “gay” and must insert a stupid little asterisk.
Off-humor, if anyone wants another “inspiring female character” that doesn’t achieve it with a mix of sexy/masculine-badass, watch Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Nausicaa is charming, thoughtful, kind to everyone, as well as her adventurous and brave personality being the only hope of stopping a pointless and deadly war.
It’s also Miyazaki’s first original film before making Studio Ghibli, and is willing to take on a slightly darker tone than most others.
That’s my thinking. I can imagine a live service game needing about 10 new lines from a character every few months, and depending on the hassle of recording studios, AI could be great for that - IF it can be set up in such a way that its use is only applied with permission of the actor who created the voice. They’d also have the right to refuse AI voicing for that session, provided they give a reasonable plan for in-person recording.
Even if I enjoyed a lot of that game, I feel sad that it often felt small-scope; tight hallways, no “canal/highway” type sequences, and only three guns. You don’t even use the gravity gloves in the innovative ways you use the gravity gun.
I feel like this is 90% of politics; a gun is held to someone’s head for a hostage demand, and to not give in to the demand is to be as bad as the shooter themselves.
“How could you shoot down my bill for a Coal Chugging Committee? It would’ve created so many jobs111”
I’m reminded of a scene from Thank Goodness You’re Here where the corner shop’s rat infestation advances so much they’ve just taken over the business, and as you enter the last time one of the rats has a name tag behind the counter.
For me it’s Of Countless Stars, the final dungeon theme of Endwalker.
Ubisoft is clearly a tone-deaf company. But that doesn’t change that this comment has been frequently cited in some very out-of-context ways.
For those who don’t know, the not-owning games comment was in reply to an investor asking why people were reticent to try out Ubisoft+, their monthly service that lets people play pretty much all their games. He was suggesting many people are not used to the option of mass rental as opposed to ownership. But, many Game Pass subscribers (at least before their price increase) can attest that when the value proposition is good enough, it is an appealing option, wherein you accept impermanent access to get more games. In that sense, he was right.
So far as I can see, the intent of the comment had nothing to do with people who buy “lifetime” copies of their games. There’s separate criticisms to make about poor online implementations leading games like The Crew to be yoinked, and I’m in favor of that regulation. But Ubisoft is hardly alone in the way they’ve mishandled that, and the quote had nothing to do with it. I feel like most people pointing to it have only a vague idea of what corporate greed it represents, as though CEOs just want a way to delete your library and somehow make money from it.
Don’t forget MP and MP2. The first will arrest you for trying to take pictures of a military base, and the second was the highlight of Samus’ adventures.
What are you talking about? There’s two of them and the bed is just big enough for them.
I saw Rebel Ridge on Netflix, could very well be that police departments generate revenue through Civil Forfeiture.
(It’s a fictional thriller, not a documentary, but very much based on modern realities)
To me, the biggest danger is people being “scared to talk about” a subject. This applies both to the comedian thinking of making a joke about X demographic, and also the member of X demographic unsure whether to voice how bad the joke made them feel.
Say the second guy condemns the comedian with an ultimate mic drop moment, so the comedian just shuts up and only talks the subject with an echo chamber of bigots who’ve had similar experiences.
Or, the second guy shuts up forever, and when the first guy runs for president on a platform of stopping the orphan crushing machine, the second guy thinks “Man, fuck that guy” and votes against him.
There’s definitely a much better median where they bring up the discontent in a gentle prompt - only escalating if they’re ignored. It takes two though, and the comedian would have to be okay with saying “Okay, I apologize.” That part is hard; with so much anonymous interaction now it feels rare for anyone to humbly admit fault.
Giving some Weird Al vibes with that mission…
So, the sad news is, most kinds of house spiders that you’d do this to won’t survive if you put them outside. If you want to keep them alive, put them somewhere out of sight.
This is exactly my worry.
Suppose that on some level, this was possible. You wouldn’t see nice, cozy instances of people who’ve finished their old collection selling them to low-income folks that just got their first Steam Deck. You’d put some games on sale for $10, and an automated Python script would automatically buy them and put them back up for sale for $49.98, one cent less than the new copies being sold.
When literally every single digital copy of a game is “equivalent”, the used games market just doesn’t make sense - although there’s a hundred third-party sites that would like it to work that way so they can take their un-earned cut.