Video game thread

@Havoc  
I miss when they were still Epic MegaGames and they produced (or published, with fair licensing) gems like ZZT, Jazz Jackrabbit, Tyrian, Zone 66, Epic Pinball, One Must Fall: 2097, Fire Fight… you know, pretty much everything before Unreal exploded and turned Tim Sweeney into Sweeney Timm.

@Azure Fang  
I only ever knew them for Unreal. And in my case, the game (the first one) didn’t work properly on my PC (little me didn’t understand the concept of PC specs) and then my father’s “friend” stole it. And it was the first game I’d ever bought for myself, too. So I supposed I’ve always been some level of “fuck Epic”.

For those that have been waiting for it, HuniePop 2: Double Date has a Steam page and can be wishlisted. Steam kinda called me out and dropped this at the end of my discovery queue…
 
On twitter, dev says it will fully release before Valentine’s Day, but actual date is still TBA. I’ve updated the list of unlock codes for when the game releases, and unless a snarky mod deletes it, it can be found on the game’s forum.

@Absol95  

 
Yes. It’s just as much of a distributed-computing (or if you drop politeness, Clientside and getting worse by the day) lagfest.

@Azure Fang  
Nice. I actually liked the first game.

@Officer Hotpants  
I’ve been waiting so long I’ve stopped caring about it.

Totally Accurate Battlegrounds is truly the Unity equivalent to PUBG.
 
Oh, and I have a hope that by late 2022 or mid 2023, the video game industry of the west || realizes that their virtue signaling and pandering to SJWs is hurting them and that they have substantially, if not severely, shot themselves in the legs and feet with their hypocrisy and corruption. Many companies gradually wise up and say no to ResetPEDO era, cut down on the empty doublespeak nonsense about being ““inclusive and comfortable””. ||  
>INB4 that won’t happen before WW3 starts  
Hey, the video game industry went through a major low point before in 1983 to early 1985, especially the console market, in the form of the Great Crash. Somewhat similar situation with PC and Mac gaming in the late 1990s-early 2000s. If devs and publishers eventually managed to get out of those low points, why can’t they realize their mistakes this time around? Oh, and EA lost the exclusive rights to Star Wars video games, plus MW 2019 is good from what I’ve seen. I think we are starting to see light at the end of the tunnel.

@Absol95  
It’s the oncoming train.

@Absol95  
Doubtful. It’s more likely it’s going into remission for a short time so they can accrue brownie points for “not being woke” before they push it all back in again once it gets popular.
 
Remember The Mandalorian? A truly over-rated show with prequel-tier writing, but after being subjected to DisneyWARS writing full of identity politics and anti-capitalist messages forced into their STAR WARS films, people where weeping tears of joy on their knees just to have anything that wasn’t that, it didn’t matter how terrible the product actually was.
 
Then, as Mando season 2 went along they started to creep virtue signalling into the show, masking it behind fan-pandering by returning beloved characters from older Star Wars content, and everyone praised it for simply not humiliating and character assassinating them. As if that’s a point of praise, and not just the basic expectation. All the while, the telltale symptoms are starting to appear again, and no-one seems to be the wiser.
 
I’m aware that right now I’m talking about the movie industry, but these propagandists all seem to read from the same script. So if this is an indication of what’s happening to video games, what the AAA Games Industry Commissars are realising is that they don’t have any more popular IPs to bastardise. So they need to build more to use as platforms for their politics.

@Absol95  
Let them keep up that behavior for 5 years and I’ll light a little flame of hope for them. Until then I just see what I’ve seen plenty of times before: happy accidents. This or that failing developer or platform will bumble their way into doing something competently.
 
I really don’t know how people can see the same pattern repeat itself dozens of times and still mistake every few-and-far-between moment of positivity as the beginning of a complete reversal of course. Companies don’t do 180 turns. Any change, good or bad, happens gradually. They went to shit over the course of years and IF they ever pull their heads out of their asses, it’ll be a similarly long process. Especially for the larger companies who have to fight their own wholly disconnected investors the whole way.

@Officer Hotpants  
I’m more inclined to believe were in for a corporate industry collapse, concurrent with an indie renaissance, before the current corporate games industry sees any improvements in any appreciable way.

@Absol95  
im sad that TABG didnt properly took off when it lauched
 
a gripe i always had with pubg and similar games its that they are both 1st and 3rd person games for no reason at all  
i always found redundant to have both modes since why wouldnt you just perma use 3rd person (except maybe indoors) since it lets you to see enemies behind a wall or corner without them ever knowing you are there?
 
there is a reason why using swords in pvp kind of breaks the game (equiping a swords puts you on 3rd person on a game thats almost always on 1st person) to the point of making high end pvp activities uterly boring

Ahhhh. Just played Thunder Force 4 for the first time in just shy of a decade. I needed that. I’ve needed that for years, now.
 
@Azure Fang  
Yeah. Collapse is generally the only way to turn a company or industry around once it’s fully gone.

@FeatherTrap  
Remember Evolve? It was announced with the microtransactions before anyone had any idea what it was.

@GuiltyGrimoire  
More specifically, wasn’t it announced with, like, 15 mutually exclusive pre-paid “DLCs”?

@GuiltyGrimoire  
I don’t remember that game, but sounds like a >fellow kids situation. Someone detached from reality trying to “fit in”, and not realizing that audience actually DESPISES microtransactions (or already has games to spend money on).

Please, go here to talk about Game Industry BS.

Heads up to Endless fans: It’s Endless Day 2021. Endless Day achievements and heroes are unlockable in all Endless Universe games, and there’s new rewards on https://www.games2gether.com, including a free copy of classic Virtua Fighter 2 (courtesy of Amplitude Studios’ overlord Sega). Endless Day ends on the 25th, so get your free game while you can.
 
EDIT: More info can be found in the news section of any Endless Universe game, such as here.

@Officer Hotpants  
I didn’t remember the exact details, thank you.
 
 
@Barhandar  
Made by the Left 4 Dead team, Evolve was a assymetrical multiplayer where 4 hunters chase one monster. Monster eats random npc enemies, levels up and takes out hunters, or hunters trap it and kill it. Had the Titanfall 1 problem of ‘1 month gameplay then drop’. Playercount dropped massively not even a year in, went f2p a few years ago, then died hard.
 
Edit:This is all off of the top of my head, and I never played it myself, so excuse an mistakes.

@GuiltyGrimoire  
So, The Hidden: Source? Or that one AvP game where you can play as marines? These kinds of games tend to drop pretty quickly indeed.

@Barhandar  
Evolve was purely greed and decision faulty, it was praised as being fun. And yes, those games do drop, although some definately get a good following (e.g. Dead By Daylight).

@GuiltyGrimoire  
As I recall it (and I may be recalling wrong, so please do forgive me if so), Evolve was originally being looked at in the same light as L4D - just release and done - but TRS made the mistake of sticking with then-publisher THQ who ended up going tits-up; they tried to buy back their own publishing rights, but were outbid by Take-Two/2K (their $250k to 2K’s $11m), and Take-Two/2K pushed for the DLC-spree under the guise of “extending development”. Greed yes, but the distinction is worth note.

I’ve been playing Graveyard keeper lately. It’s like Stardew, but with dead people.

@Havoc  
I haven’t really played since early access (in fact, it’s kinda the reason I stopped playing early access games). Last I heard there were a lot of aspects in the finished game that felt unpolished. Is it worth it now?