Video game thread

@Officer Hotpants  
You mean steam? What did they do recently?
 
I decided it was a pretty shitty service a long time ago, back when they were banning people from their accounts (and games) for using wrong pronouns on the forums.

@Officer Hotpants  
It’s probably the most intrusive game launcher I can think of with how much it pops up all of the time.

@ponypony221  
That’s not on Steam itself, but rather on some of the moderators happening to be too attached to emotions and gender studies bullshit.

@Officer Hotpants
 
Origin is better than the EA app for sure, overall. However, if you happen to be running Mac OS, there is no major push to the new one.  
Also, I think Origin is better than the Bethesda Launcher, Epic store, and Ubisoft Connect, though still less optimal than Beamdog, Steam, itch.io, and GOG.

@Absol95  
It’s literally Valve/Steam giving them powers over you.

Halo multiplayer just isn’t fun anymore. In all but about 20% of matches you’ll get pitted against a full stack that plays social as if it were ranked and get completely stomped. Another 15% you’ll get a match where the enemy team is so poorly composed you do the stomping, and then the last 5% it’s actually a good, close, fun match.
 
I don’t know if it’s just nostalgia, but matches 10-15 years ago felt significantly more even.

@Anonymous #F9D1  
Unfortunately, Halo too has implemented the wonderful, semi-recent trend in AAA shooters: a skill-based matchmaking system!
 

The Anniversary PS4 and Xbox One (certainly can confirm for the former) editions of TES V: Skyrim are basically the Special Editions of Skyrim tacked on with not only new code here and there but the Creation Club content that Todd liked the most. ||Just saying, alright? I also think that Fuckup 76’s launch and the PR + refund controversy Nightmare surrounding it was more worthy of having Todd Howard grabbed, dragged into a restroom stall, have his head shoved into the toilet, and flushing it, than Skyrim having more than one official edition, overall. SE is where it should have official with the official re-releases of Skyrim, overall. ||  

@Absol95  
I hope Bill Gates locks Todd in a locker.

@Absol95  
Remember when people not naming any said that MS buying Bethesda would correct that ship?

@Cyborg_pony  
I do, to a point.

@Cyborg_pony  
I hope it will eventually. Usually companies are allowed to remain as they were for a period after a buyout. I don’t expect anything, but it would be nice.

I’m liking NIS’ practice of bundling their classics for upscaled re-releases. I just played Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, and I loved it. It was so good, it makes me wish I had played it when I was younger. Hopefully, they go on to release the final two Marl Kingdom games in Volume 4. Neither of them have come to the U.S. in any form yet.

@ANoobis  
Yeah, they’ve always been kind of schizo about what they will and won’t export. I mean they brought over La Pucelle and it did well, yet they won’t bring over Marl? They’re one series. And not in the way that all their games trade characters & references back and forth; I mean they’re actually part of a series in the same setting. I think La Pucelle is set something like 60 years later (don’t recall the exact details now). They’re still pulling the Final Fantasy shit long after they should have learned better.
 
Which reminds me: I need to pick up La Pucelle on Steam.

@ponypony221  
Just a reminder, Bill Gates is not even on the board of Directors of MS any more; Last time Bill was CEO was in 2008. Now, another man is calling the shots.

@Absol95  
I’m still blaming him for everything. Besides, he only got more evil since he left.

I’ve been playing a lot of games lately. Mostly action roguelikes, like Noita (with pony mod), Void Bastards and Hades.

Microsoft is going to lay off 10,000 employees. It’s mostly marketing and sales people, but Bethesda and 343 are both being impacted as well.

@ANoobis  
They are going to spin this as a good thing to investors.

@Havoc  
It probably is.

343 needs to be just plain shut down. Even if at least some of the women pull the #MeToO card, that doesn’t make them winners in the end; more accurately, it makes them opportunists and exaggerators.

How will the Hogwarts Legacy devs react when most of the players make white male characters amd join Slitheran?

@Humble Oriathan  
I find it weird that you can be a negroid person in the game. Was there any negroid person in the movies? I actually don’t remember. There was that Chinese girl but that’s about it.

@Humble Oriathan  
Have they forgot Draco Malfoy exists?

@IvanSatoru  
There were some black hogwarts students in the movie, but that was fine because the movies are set in the 1990s. The game is set in the 1880s and there’s more black students then there should be for a time when interracial relationships were still forbidden in many parts of Europe.