Video game thread

GTA 1 and GTA 2, as well as the older pre-”“Definitive”” PC versions of GTA III, GTA Vice City, Unreal Gold + its expansion, and Prey 2006 ought to be brought back to Steam and GOG someday. Ditto for Titanfall 1’s current situation in both EA Desktop (formerly Origin) & Steam. Same could be said for Blake Stone, Corridor 7, DarkSeed, and Gunman Chronicles current lack of Presence on Steam, and maybe also GOG, too. Feel free to correct me if the situation regarding the aforementioned games changes sooner or later.

SAG-AFTRA screwed over their VAs, and there a lot of cope going around from former cheerleaders.

What is everyone actually excited about in this year’s release schedule? I’m hoping Rise of the Ronin turns out to be as good as it sounds.

@ANoobis
New games are being made?

@ANoobis
I don’t even keep track of what’s due to release anymore. Most times they end up being a disappointment. Plenty of good games still receiving content updates in my library, and still some I’ve never played.
Been hooked on King of Dragon Pass the past couple days. Might finally launch Metro or Witcher 3 next.

@IvanSatoru
I mostly buy indie games now. But even then, I wait until they come out so I can see the Steam reviews.

@ANoobis
April 23, Fallout: London
Fallout London - Official Release Announcement

@BikerDash
Tip-top, Tally-ho and Bob’s-your-Uncle, lads! Are you gentlemen all getting ready to see if this one is any good?

Better then the Frontier at least, egads I hope it’s not worse… X(

@FeatherTrap
I plan to be one of the very first to play FO:London

Sony: We’re going to make all gamers hate us.

Capcom: Hold our soy Latte.

@Cyborg_pony
Installing DRM that was put together by a very much sub-reputable Russian company that has practically all of the characteristics of some kind of malware? Indeed, very anti-consumer.

@Absol95
Dipshits that used to be Pro-consumer will sadly defend Capcom all because “You don’t need lewd mod! Reject Horny!”
Which only only outs themselves, since those are only ones they download. Seriously I saw some peckerhead that bitched about how Comics were making the females ugly defend MK’s designs and call Ashley’s original design from RE4 saying she “Looked like a foot.”

I guess he was right. They would have agree with Anita if she wasn’t so condescending and smug about it. Since a lot of them have become that.

Well, Ready or Not was the only game I’ve been excited for for the past decade, and its 1.0 release has apparently been a disappointment. AI seeing you through walls, instantly headshotting you with no time to react, unfinished/broken animations, lots of egregious visual bugs, changing your friendly AI’s loadout doesn’t work, mirrors don’t function (even SWAT 4 had working mirrors), somehow worse pathfinding than SWAT 4, along with many other issues.

For a game envisioned as a spiritual successor to SWAT 4, it appears to play more like bad terrorist hunt. There’s no yelling at the suspects and watching their animations closely to determine if they’re going to surrender or attack you. There’s only shooting them before they have a chance to spin around and instantly dome you, because they never surrender. Not if you surprise them, not if they’ve taken several bullets, and even if they do finally put their hands up it’s always a trick so they can pull out a knife and stab you when you walk up to arrest them.

I can’t say I’m too surprised. The devs stopped sending out monthly newsletters years ago and shortly afterward went practically silent after the community voiced concerns over the lack of Map and AI improvements in favor of a flashy unplanned PvP mode (which did not release in 1.0 either, to my knowledge), but I am disappointed. Maybe it’ll be worth buying in another two years.

@Anonymous #F9D1
They were Not Ready.

@Anonymous #F9D1
Saw someone streaming that and now they’re not. I wonder if he hyped up his followers to get it beforehand.

Prison Architect just announced that they’re getting a sequel.
But I’m not buying it because I think the art style looks way too goofy.
As in, they took a game that was a little cartoony but otherwise very dark, and turned it into Two Point Hosiptal.

Also, the last time I bought a sequel to a Paradox-published game, it was so horribly unoptimized that the devs admitted it wasn’t ready and asked players to come back in a couple of months.

@Twiface
I heard they take away basic features to resell them as DLC.

@Twiface
God, prison architect has become such a tragedy. Introversion finished the game in 2015 and it was great. They went through and the fixed the issues they didn’t have time to fix in the bug bashes throughout development, the mods generally worked even if they were several updates old, and they added an interesting gimmick as a send-off.

Then Paradox purchased the IP in 2019 and spent the next three years fucking up the game, trying to milk it with DLC, and causing a multitude of bugs in the process that they never fixed and never would have fixed. And for the last “update” before abandoning it in 2023, they went and changed a core mechanic of the game to the point it breaks several playstyles and prison layouts.

@Anonymous #F9D1
Which core mechanic?

@Twiface
The regime, specifically around eat, shower, and yard times. Formerly, setting any one of these would restrict prisoners to the room until the next time period. During Eat time they would stay in the canteen, shower in the shower, yard in the yard. You knew where they would be so you could adjust guard deployment and other prisoner security regimes accordingly. For instance, during yard time you could take guards away from the common rooms and place them in the yard, or while the rest of the prison is eating you could have the snitches wander around and use the common rooms without danger of being shanked.

Now they are no longer restricted to those rooms. For eat and shower, there are two options: After they’re done, send them back to their cells for lockup or send them to free time. Yard time did not get options, and will only send them to free time. Which makes it functionally the exact same as free time, as they prioritize going to the yard anyway if they need to. Keeping prisoners segregated with the regime is significantly less effective now, as is micromanaging guard deployment, because no matter what prisoners will be wandering around the prison. It discourages building general population areas and almost necessitates hiring more guards than really needed.

The new settings aren’t bad ideas, if they were additional options. Or if they were given to all three regime settings rather than “fuck you, yard time is free time”.

@Anonymous #F9D1
I see. So you can’t operate nearly as efficiently as before, then.

I’m pleasantly surprised that my post actually got a conversation going, since the games I play the most tend to be far more obscure than what usually gets talked about here.

@TrukkinDuck
That’s an accusation that gets levied against Paradox a lot, though I can’t think of any specific examples of that happening.

@Twiface
Well, that, but my main gripe is that due to the change one of the regime modes just doesn’t function anymore. Yard time was already incredibly situational, and now it’s entirely useless.

Side note, paradox’s official wiki hasn’t even been updated to detail most of the DLC features, much less gameplay changes like this. Goes to show how little they cared about PA even when they had just purchased the IP. Maybe buying it so they could make an ugly 3D sequel was the plan all along.

@Anonymous #F9D1
PA?

@TrukkinDuck
Prison Architect

At least that is what their previous posts were about.

Anyone playing any of the newer Pokey-man games? I heard that they got really dull after gen 5