Way to go Belgium!

 

You know, I'm very ambivalent about this. I would fucking love for the invisible hand of the market to do slap the shit out of the industry so that there wouldn't be a need for any govt action in battling this retarded trend. I wish that EA and all the rest of them realized that maybe preying on and pissing off your hardcore customers isn't a good idea, that shitting on the core demo guaranteed to give a shit about your shit is a bad practice, because you can't guarantee that casuals will turn out for your stuff, and if you base your business on the casual gamers, then things will build to a critical mass at some point and hardcore people will abandon you.

I really wish there was no need for what Belgium is doing, because politicians are uniquely retarded when it comes to technology and things to do with the Internet and the web and games. But you've been an unrepentant shithead for a straight decade, EA, and this is what you've caused. Belgium probably isn't a big market, but please, for the love of all the gods, someone at EA must realize this could have a ripple effect, right? And the ripple effect might not just stop at regulating lootboxes, it might try to really fuck with the games industry. Because people will applaud this, and politicians in Belgium and elsewhere might think "look, those strange video game people like us now, let's do somethimg completely retarded because we don't know a fucking thing about video games". It'll probably be something in the think-of-the-children category.

 

Agree ScottPress on politicians knowing shit about gaming/technology, but that's about it. If after a decade lootboxes have only grown in popularity, I see no reason to think that companies won't continue utilizing a gimmick that makes millions of people fork over their money hand over fist. I'm not sure where you're basing the idea that 'at some point in the future' this will randomly somehow stop being profitable. Gambling games have been around for millennia, this is just the newest form of them.

Perfectly fine with the government getting involved, because lootboxes were essentially sidestepping gambling regulations put into place to protect minors. If lashing back against that forces the companies to back away from lootboxes? Fully fucking down.

 

Just going to mention that the article is just about a year old and that I'm really confused why it's coming up now. Can't even be Heroes o/t Storm stripping away the option to buy cosmetic-only boxes with real money because who the fuck cares about a dead game. (And that's the most recent example - iirc Valve et al of the P2W department. complied with the Belgian ruling somewhere last summer.)

Anyway, while on the topic... The FTC is going to convene a workshop on loot boxes later this year.

 

So with Borderlands 3 officially announced to be an Epic Games exclusive for 6 months on pc, I guess I'll be waiting for the GotY edition in a couple years.

Just as well I suppose. I can probably snag it on a winter sale or something on Steam and save some money.

 

If it's got split screen couch coop like the previous ones, then it'll be well worth it to get it on console. Still risky getting any game on release, but I'll probably do it.

 

https://kotaku.com/an-easy-mode-has-never-ruined-a-game-1833757865

Kotaku whines about easy mode, aka Games Journos, who routinely call gamers entitled, prove themselves entitled by not being catered to with an easy mode.

 

That's a 300 IQ play right there, taking the easy mode out so the game journalists can't finish it.

 

In case people haven't seen it, there's some new information to be had in PC Gamer's UK May issue about VtM: Bloodlines 2.

Spoiler

[/spoiler

 

Game informer had a nice response to this

https://www.gameinformer.com/opinion/2019/04/03/from-software-games-and-easy-mode-dont-mix

 

The replies to this tweet are almost as funny as the tweet itself.

 

Honestly, the whole "From games need easy mode" thing completely misses the point that the difficulty is an intrinsic part of the experience, in the same way as the visual design and boss mechanics. You can't change the difficulty (in either direction) without also changing the experience, detrimentally so IMO (speaking as someone who has played every From game but only beaten Dark Souls 3).

Some (in fact, I'd argue most) games work well with varying difficulty, as they tend to be designed around the narrative, specific mechanics, etc, where the design doesn't really care about challenging the player, only that a skill check exists. Which means that changing the difficulty has minimal impact on the games' design.

But From games, among some others, are very carefully crafted for a very specific experience, and frankly excessive amounts of designer time and attention is paid to balancing every aspect of the game to deliver that experience. And that includes the difficulty; changing difficulty fundamentally changes the experience of the game, and completely invalidates the developers nearly obsessive craft.

Adding easy mode to Sekiro et al makes sense if you view games as a product, in the sense that everyone deserves access to a product, but most emphatically does not if you view games as art, as the experience it's designed to deliver is an intrinsic part of the art.

 

Reminds me of a Morrowind review I read years ago, when Morrowind was the thing. Which I can remember all these years later due to the sheer overwhelming stupidity of it.

It was terribly negative, owing to the reviewers own terrible time with the game which he recounted as having made his character, gotten the starting instructions of "leave the door to your right, walk twenty feet to the fast travel, take it to Balmora, and speak to your new boss" and decided that it would take up too much of his starting gold and so he just wandered off out of the village to stumble blindly across the gameworld until he ragequit and wrote a scathing review. For the poor sods who never played Morrowind, carrying out that starting quest of "fast travel, then speak to your new mentor" takes all of a minute, involves zero chance of combat unless you randomly start punching guards, and awards you a big ol' sack o gold with instructions to go buy whatever weapons, armour, potions, or magical training you want to prepare for your real first quest.

 

I am sympathetic to the whole 'we can't nerf From Games' schtick...

But bosses being able noclip through fucking walls and pillars while your sword instantly bounces off is straight up bullshit I don't care who you are.

 

I’m considering getting Borderlands Game of the Year Edition for my PS4 but I exclusively play single player while I’ve heard this is much more geared towards multiplayer. Is it (and its sequels) worth it?

 

I've played every Borderlands game to date solo and quite enjoyed it.

You're not going to be doing much in the end game (read: 3rdish time through the campaign), simply because mobs become such bullet sponges that even basic enemies take ages to kill when you're alone, but that's 20+ hours into the game. Up until then, solo play is perfectly viable and a great deal of fun.

At the very least, the game is a 12-15 hour campaign, including a whole big slew of side quests, which is interesting enough.

That said, I would strongly recommend Borderlands 2 over the first, simply because the campaign/narrative is significantly more engaging/prominent and you'd probably have more fun with that.

 

I'm playing Dark Souls for the first time at the moment, and while on the whole I'm not finding it as tough as I'd expected (although admittedly, I'm not going in blind due to picking it up thanks to an enjoyable let's play), getting murdered by a demon who isn't even in the same room as me - and of course, Smough's magic hammer making things harder than it already was - did nearly make me rage quit the game entirely.

 

Rimworld got too real for me. Decided to call my settlement Konoha and use Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke as my first three colonists.

Two hours into my attempt at survival, Sasuke flies into a murderous rage and beats Sakura to death - after his pet was killed by a mad cougar. Naruto, in the meanwhile, has contracted a muscular parasite - which doesn't really matter anyway, since he was a child actor and thus feels like he is above hauling shit around.

What a shame. Shit went south only a few days before I could have had them smoking the first joints for relaxation.

Honestly, I loled.

Edit:

Story #2 ended thus: Hiruzen Sarutobi, while hunting, shot a boomrat with an arrow, causing an enormous explosion right next to the tribe's compound. The fire spread quickly. Everyone died.

 

Finished KOTOR 1 yesterday. I'll use spoilers even though it's a 16 year old game. Like I said in the last post, it's probably unfair to judge a game that old in a modern context, but this was my second playthough, with my first being the year it came out. My opinion is unchanged, in that it's certainly not the best game of all time, and not even the best SW game.

Spoiler

First off, I will say that I went full light-side mode. Doing all the Sith academy stuff felt kinda weird, though I guess their screening process just sucked. Only real issue I had was at the end of the game, trying to figure out how to redeem Bastila. I tried it 4 different times before figuring it out. There's a bit of dialog that has 10 or 12 choices, and you have to pick all the right one. As it turns out, it was one of the earlier choices that was making the difference, since the last few were the same and it ended up working. Ultimately doesn't real change much other than getting like 2 extra lines of dialog after killing Malak, and her appearing at the award ceremony. Also, I was fem!Raven with no romances, so there was that.

Secondly, I'm still confused about the side plot stuff. I don't know how much I missed. I have no idea if things change if I go back to a planet after finishing it. I don't know how much planet order matters. What I do know is that I was pretty annoyed when I had the Genoharadan mission to kill a guy on Dantoine, only for the planet to get glassed when I tried to go there. Sure, I know it was probably a dark-side mission, but I find it silly to get punished for wanting to 100% a planet before leaving it. How was I supposed to know that I literally have to leave Manaan immediately upon getting the quest (though honestly, I don't know if that would even work, but I assume Dantoine getting glassed is a direct result of me getting the Manaan star map). Honestly, I assume I missed quite a few sidequests in places I triggered from elsewhere. Like, Mission's brother (predictably) skipped town on Tatooine after I gave him money, and I heard nothing else about that afterwards. Also never got to complete the one side quest on Kashyyk where a guy is paying of a debt by enslavement. I found the evidence, and instead of turning it in immediately, I continued on, and got punished. Losing quest turn-ins because the main plot advances is still silly. TBH, I didn't do most of the side-character side-quests either. Carth was too annoying, and I didn't use Zaalbar at all. That one droid I only used on Taris that one time, and Juhani only got used once when I was captured on the Leviathan.

Thirdly, is the rpg elements of the game. I found skills to be extremely underwhelming. For someone like Jolee, who only got 1 point per level up, there wasn't really anything to do than to just put it in healing. Even my main character was just healing + awareness. Mission got 5 points per level up so she could get all the useful stats. I put my starting stat points into Str, and don't really regret it, though I would be interested in a charisma run. Secondly, Force Powers. I dislike how many of them are locked behind armor class. Am I punished for being a soldier class and wanting heavy armor? I didn't do the math on whether or not the light-armor skills would boost me past it, so idk. It just felt kinda weird, being a Jedi and not being able to use many Jedi skills. However, I will say that Destroy Droid is pretty fucking good. Trivialized a lot of sections. Also, a 3 jedi party where all 3 of them can heal the group is pretty stupid too. Honestly, past a certain point it felt like I just couldn't die at all, and that's without using consumables. The only spot that held me up for more than a moment was on the Rakata planet where you had to fight 4 Rancor at once. I did it first try, but it wasn't easy, though perhaps if I knew it was coming I could pick a better party comp.

Fourthly, I am curious to how long the game actually is. My playtime was roughly about 30 hours (spread out over an entire month.) There's not actually that much content. So if you know where to go, know what all the dialog is, not killing every enemy on every map, I could see being able to cut down the play time quite a lot. The main thing going against it is the clunky combat. The only comparison I really have is Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance. That's an 8-10 hour game on a casual playthrough. The combat is fluid and it's linear game, so you just keep going in a straight line until it's done, and I don't feel like this game is entirely dissimilar.

One final thing. After I finished the game, I watched the dark side ending. It was pretty funny. Persuading Zaalbar to kill Mission is pretty brutal.

Anyways, I don't know if I'll play KOTOR 2. I've seen some people saying it's better, but idk. I'm just glad that I'm finally done with this one, because I really wanted to get on to playing other games, and I know if I stopped playing before I finished, I would never go back. So I finished it, and now I'm playing Diablo 1. I'm glad it's on GoG, because all my previous attempts to get it working through the years (using things like Dosbox) never worked properly. It's as fun as a remember, though muscle memory is a bitch. I keep trying to hold Alt to highlight items, but that's a D2 thing. I also completely forgot that gold is a tangible item that goes in your inventory (or ultimately left in town on the ground).. And items that hit 0 durability just disappear, which is pretty brutal. Especially if you're a warrior, since you get the OP butcher's cleaver like 30 minutes into the game, but you have to run (or TP) back to town twice per floor just to repair it. Once I get griswold's edge I'll probably go to sword/board since I've got arkaine's valor, and just block spam my way to victory. It's just weird, since I kinda forgot how much of a roguelike the game actually is, and it has me thinking about the old HP rpg I was making in rpgmaker, and whether or not I could make a roguelike out of that, and I think I could. Not that I would ever finish making it though.