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Cake day: June 4th, 2023

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  • Did a quick calculation and found that a 60$ game needs to be 35hrs to break even with movie prices edit: *where I live

    How much do tickets cost where you live? Even using older $10 per seat prices and an average run time of 2 hours I come down to $5/hr. Also probably not just going out to a theater alone so if you're bringing a date or your family, or even going with friends for a collective experience that balloons quite a bit.




  • There were plenty of games that took advantage of one console over the other due to the very different architectures and it was a wonderful and neat thing. That said this is not really the point being made.

    It was stated earlier that Sony set "the market rules" when this is untrue. Nintendo in the 80s was incredibly anti-competitive and had a very closed off ecosystem and a tight grip over developers. It wasnt even a matter of whether the game worked on one console vs another it was a matter of nintendo dominating the market and retaliating against 3rd parties that tried to work with other developers. 3rd party exclusives and first and 2nd party devs focusing on one console is somethin thats been baked into the console market since nintendo came into power in the mid 80s.






  • Like I said I'm basing my assessment on both games by the response the community gave and reviews Ive read and seen. I tend to do the patient gamer thing and wait for big steam sales before buying a game(unless its something I really want and sometimes I know indy games are already cheap and grab it at a lesser sale). Cyberpunk had a similarly criticized launch with the multiple daily 1001 posts on reddit and much like starfield has people who defend it you had people defending cyberpunk as well.

    But from the outside looking in it was literally the same. You had the people who let themselves get spunup by the hypemachine absolutely let down when the game didnt live up to the hype.

    You had the people who were chastising the bugs and "dated mechanics" how the game "didnt feel alive" and the "driving physics suck"

    You had the hardcore CRPG fans for whom the only true RPG is: Baldurs gate 2, Morowind, Fallout 2, and special mentions to fallout new vegas. They'd come in and criticize lack of options and choice and blablabla.

    You had the youtubers clowning on the game like Dunky showcasing a bug-fest.

    And among people who actually reviewed the game the community consensus I saw was polarizing. Some did love it but a lot of people expressed it not living up to potential.

    Again I cant say for sure(maybe next winter sale will be my time to shine) but it's feels like this outrage cycle was targeting cyberpunk for a while and then one day it just stopped. And now that its time for the community to throw their poo at something again cyberpunk is the hero of the story.

    So sorry for the rambling but in short my post is less a personal judgment of cyberpunk and more a "the community hated this game and had little good to say about it, and now it's their precious baby and starfield is the bad one". I know its not happening here but I figure rather than spitting into the wind on reddit I'd complain about this weird online discourse here.




  • Lol I like how you took a break from the sprawling modern CRPG by playing a different sprawling modern CRPG.

    I do love the pillars of eternity series though. I think the first game got a little exposition text heavy and could have done with some more character animations during cutscenes, but I loved the story and the setting and I enjoyed the tropical island hopping of the 2nd(though I do wish the ship to ship combat was better they were so close to what could have been a paired down FTL).



  • Oh man this discourse has been absolutely typical Gamer garbage on the various subreddits. Every day a new thread with thousands of posts not reading the article but rushing in to say the same thing. It's weird because they are very different games and it also feels like Im taking crazy pills because while I have not played cyberpunk(Im waiting for it go get super cheap on sale before I bother with it) I remember the launch being an absolute shitshow and the general consensus on the story being "meh".

    Suddenly starfireld comes out and now Cyberpunk is heralded as the greatest at everything. Like you dont have to pick a team you can just like what you like. I get bethesda sold out to microsoft and is now under scrutiny, and I get that the same vocal posters let themselves get wrapped up in hype, but this is excessive.




  • A disclaimer: I havent played the game and probably wont for a few months to a year when its on steam sale so I’m going to just speak based on what the article is saying and experience with other games.

    I think its a tricky balancing act to make when it comes to creating an open world game where you travel through space. Different games have approached it differently with some games opting to scale everything down super small and letting you suspend disbelief(like outer wilds) but that wouldnt work as well on a game like this. Other games go for the hub approach where your ship is a hub that connects you to different open maps on different planets. This approach also works in letting you travel the stars and lets the story do the heavy lifting of conveying scale, but it doesnt mesh with the bethesda open world style. Likewise it can also sometimes turn your ship into just a metroid style elevator and so instead of feeling how big the universe it you effortlessly fast travel across the galaxy. Other games fill the space by making big procedural generated never ending expanses, but that can be hit and miss and not really what a lot of people want in a game like this one.

    I understand wanting to pad things out a little bit to prevent things from feeling toy like in the way that Outer Wilds did, but it does run the risk of just being boring and uninteresting and leave you wishing for a more “gamified” tighter experience or at least less openness and more zipping to the places that matter. That said if exploring is worthwhile it could make it less of a bummer. I think Wind Waker and breath of the Wild are good examples of this. Wind Waker’s sailing was notoriously long and boring when it came out, however while most of the islands are small rocks, they all have something. Some secret, some rabbit hole leading to something interesting, a piece of heart, a chest of ruppies, SOMETHING. If you engage with it and mark your map along the way, and explore then the mostly empty map becomes a little more engaging.

    Likewise Breath of the wild’s map isnt full of little side stories and secret villages or anything so if you decide to go off into that distant peak it will usually be self motivation. That said the game does reward you every time even if it’s not a huge reward. You will find ruins of some mysterious lost nation, you will find ruins referencing past zelda games, and shrines, and even a stupid little korok puzzle. The little gamified reward for exploring the area makes it less barren and worth exploring. So if it’s more Wind waker island, or breath of the wild and less Mass Effect 1 I can see this empty areas working.