cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/55502160

https://www.gamedate.org/

I regret literally everything about that title.

I'm talking more along the lines of, having simulator games where you work in a supermarket and you get to cause as much mayhem as possible. Not in terms of just simply killing, but more like, being a very disgruntled worker in a very annoyingly noisy environment with shitty customers. That game doesn't exist to me and I wish it would.

Instead, we get more simulator games where you're at the service of the people. That's going backwards, if you ask me.

Tao said the company plans to “minimize the impact” of rising memory costs by focusing on “monetizing the installed base” and growing software and network services revenue.

Maybe something lost in translation but that sure sounds like gouging existing customers to me.

It's been almost 30 years, and now the Final Fantasy 7 remake is out for everyone. I always said I'd buy the remake when it came out, but ~$500 was too much (for the game plus the console it required). When it came to PC (via the Epic Games Store), I was a Mac user. Now it's out on Xbox and Switch, and I've played through it on the former.

Of course, I loved the remake from the start, from the expanded opening showing the dystopia and the lack of plant life, the extra scene where Aerith's flower is stepped on before she can pick it back up, and of course the characters having voices. But then, shortly after the intro movie, I started to notice changes I didn't like. I'm fine with you not being able to rename characters. All I really changed was "Aeris" to "Aerith," correcting the translation mistake, but the remake already does this. (I also corrected "Red XIII" to [redacted] (spoiler) so when you get his real name, you get funny dialogue where Cloud asks "Who is [redacted]" and the other character says "[redacted] is [redacted]." It's not important, it's just funny to me, but it bothered me that after you learn his real name, you still call him Red XIII, so I always named him what his real name is from that point forward.)

Then after the first part of the training mission, we get back to Seventh Heaven, and I don't even have the option to give the flower to Marlene. I thought that option was special in the original, but the remake doesn't allow it. We're not giving it to Tifa because at no point does Cloud see Tifa like that — yet. It doesn't make sense. He has the flower because Aerith made him take it. Cloud's basically ace at this point, and he doesn't want to lead his childhood friend on. He just wants to get paid and move on. Aside from discarding the flower, which isn't an option, giving the flower to Marlene makes the most sense. Cloud sees that everyone in Avalanche has hope. Marlene only sees her daddy and his friends (who she also likes) go out and leave her alone every day. So you want to give her some hope. Having Cloud give Tifa the flower by default was the first half of my first issue with the remake.

In the original, Cloud loses some of his edge around the second mission. Meeting Aerith in the church, meeting her mother, the interaction with the Turks, and the whole Don Corneo business changes him a bit, and he lets more of his human side out. Not in the remake, he just stays an asshole through the whole thing, which runs through the Shinra HQ escape. Minor spoiler, but only for those who played the original and understand the context. You escape from Midgar HQ, you do the road scene, and instead of fighting the boss after, you fight the boss still on the bike. Then you fight Sephiroth for some reason and... that's it. It's over. You gotta wait until June for the second part, unless you pay $700+ for a PS5. And no one has the third part yet, even if you pay the steep fee for early access. We're not even sure if the third part will be further delayed on other platforms. So that's another issue — even those who paid the premium to access the second part early don't know when they're getting the third chapter, or even that the third chapter will be the final chapter. It's all up in the air.

What really convinced me the remake was kinda bad wasn't just the extra mission with the new Soldier villain (which is just training you for the bike mission at the end), but it was after Aerith is taken (sorry, minor spoiler) and you talk to her mom and you get her back story. Even with the voice acting... I remember thinking this scene hit so much harder in the original. But, buying Remake on the Xbox came with the original, so after I finished Remake, I fired up the original and started playing. It only takes about an hour or two to get to this scene. To do everything in Remake takes 20-40 hours in Remake, but it only takes about 3 hours in the original, due to all the fluff that was added. (Some of that fluff is good, but most of it literally exists to waste your time.) I got to that scene, and it hurt my heart nearly as much as it did the first go-around in 1997. I think it's the music. The music in Remake simply sucks. The music in the original was hot garbage because it was MIDI. I remember paying $40 to import the CD, then I found a 10MB pirated copy online. All the songs in MIDI except "One-Winged Angel" which was an MP3. I played the songs on the computer and the CD in my CD player. Sounded the same. But anyway, Nobuo Uematsu has since re-released music from Final Fantasy VII, with a full orchestra, and it sounds amazing. You don't get that in the Remake. You get boring, drowned-out songs. You also get this random ass song with vocals by Yosh from Survive Said the Prophet (Japanese rock fans know who that is) but you can never hear the song, even in the trailer. You have to go on a streaming service and look up the song and play it outside the game. It's not just weird. It's bad. The music was such an integral part of the original game, warts and all, but they couldn't get that right. And Aerith's back story just fell flat. It could have been amazing with the newer, non-MIDI, orchestral recordings, but we didn't get that.

If I said I wasn't going to play Rebirth when it comes out in June, I'd be fucking lying. Of course I'll play it. But I'm already to the Temple of the Ancients in the original. The original is ugly and the music is MIDI, but it doesn't completely disrespect your time (there are too many battles, but they can be disabled, but you shouldn't disable all of them), and it's still a great game. And it doesn't shut down on the train tracks leading to the town with Barret's back story like the original PC release did. They either used the fix from the Ultima Edition (a pirate release), or they fixed it on their own. Either way, you can play past that point now. You can probably play the entire game legally now without original hardware. That wasn't an option before — either you were emulating the PS1 version or you were running the Ultima Edition, even if you bought the PC release because no one ever played the PC release past Disc One. It just wasn't possible to proceed due to an unpatched bug. Fortunately, digital releases such as Steam, App Store, Xbox, PlayStation, and others, do allow patches and so the game was fixed. Anyway, of course I'll play Rebirth, and I'll play Reunion as well — what I assume the third one will be called, given the context and the pattern — and I damn sure can't wait to see what the new World Crisis scene looks like (that's not really a spoiler, and neither is this: if you have to go to the bathroom when you're fighting Sephiroth for the last time, pause during the match, because you won't get a chance during the nine minute cut scene that follows. At least it was 9 minutes on the PS1. It'll probably be longer in the remake. And I can't wait to see it. And I can't wait for someone to recut it with better audio.

After last week's Star Wars: Galactic Racer gameplay trailer reveal, IGN sat down with the game's makers for an in-depth chat revealing its new systems and story mode, and a proper discussion on why this marks the triumphant return of track-based racing, after so many open world games.

Today’s game is Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I’ve been checking in on this one daily. Did I maybe sort of promise to stick to New Leaf regularly? Maybe. Did I break that promise to myself? Definitely. Am I going to stick with this one? Probably not.

Anyways, I’ve been having a lot of fun with this. Shocker. I know. But I’ve grown especially fond of catching fish to display in my house. I have this squid in named Sammy. I fear Sammy’s enclosure is too small for him, but I don’t have anywhere else to put him other than sell him. And I refuse to do that.

I got both the shops constructed which is great. I ended up getting them both placed, before finally deciding to just Time Travel, as I decided I’d have more fun that way.

After that I went clothes shopping. I find it funny how sassy the player character looks. They look good and they damn well know it.

After dressing myself up I went and looked at the aquarium. Honestly that’s my favorite part of this game. Just the aquarium. Bugs, Art, Fossils? Nope. They can all screw off (nicely), I want to look at the fish dammit. I like how the lighting of the water looks and just like staring. The music that plays there is nice too. Really calming.

I ended up just propping my Switch up and watched them while I did some homework. It was chill. I actually ended up ripping the entire OST and adding it to my Jellyfin to stream.

That’s kind of all I got up too. I wanted to update on what I did last time, try and build up a habit and all that. I’m gonna try and binge Alan Wake II tomorrow, I wanted to marathon it to see how far I get.

Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20260214075750/https://www.polygon.com/video-game-romances-need-to-grow-up/

cross-posted from: https://piefed.zip/c/strategy_games/p/1093266/i-designed-a-board-game-creative-commons-open-source

Hey I've been working on this abstract strategy board game on and off for more than 10 years. I've picked up the project again trying to get a digital version up and running in the browser that is playable.

It's still under development, but you can check out the repository here: https://github.com/GreenAnts/Amalgam_Webgame/tree/main?tab=readme-ov-file. (There are links on the main page for rules, and etc)

Rulebook: https://github.com/GreenAnts/Amalgam_Webgame/tree/main/assets/Rulebook

Video tutorial: https://youtu.be/LZD5h4siXVM

Play against a (dumb) bot/AI: https://greenants.github.io/Amalgam_Webgame/ (this is the under development game, and a has a lot of placeholder text - but once you enter the bot game, it should actually work.

The game is a bit niche, and I'm assuming probably won't fit the bill for most people in this instance, but I'm hoping someone might be interested and help us grow this project. The game is open source and creative commons licensed, so I'm hoping the game will become community created.

Anyways, if you check it out, I'd greatly appreciate it!

Today’s game is some more Halo. I’ve actually been challenging myself to not do Halo for these just because of how much I do it (plus I’ve been busy adoring Alan Wake which helps). I made an exception today partly because I just wanted to relax with friends.

We did a forge game today that was Rainbow Road from Mario Kart Wii. I think our general consensus was that while this one had merit, the Halo physics just made it not fun to play. It was too faithful of a recreation to work with the physics.

We also did a game mode titled “Get out of my House” where we had to fight zombies off out of the “house”. It was fun, it definitely felt like it favored the defenders though which was a major issue.

Of course, while we did have fun with Get out of my House, we decided to wash it down with something we knew was a good time. Hence that brought us to Zealot infection. I don’t need to say much about this one. The map is basically perfect. The only issue is the roof top area is very easy for people to camp on, and I think I have an idea to counteract that in forge.

I ended up losing by 4 points. it was a pretty close match all around, so even if I didn’t nab second place I think everyone else would have been dangerously close.

That brings us to our final match. Just some slayer on Oni Sword Base. It’s like the White Bread option. It’s reliable, fun, and is just good however you do it. I got payback for the last match and won by 5 points.

That’s about all we got up too, there was a Halo 3 match we did too but that went by so quickly there’s not much to talk about. Tomorrow I think I’ll play some more Alan Wake 2. I have something I want to try out so I’m eager to get back to it.

Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/addyvalentine/gun-nose

Little Summary of the game

Reanimal is a survival horror game, stealth game, and a cinematic platformer. The story follows a brother and sister as they try to escape a hellish version of their home while attempting to save their three friends. The two must work together, explore the islands, escape from monsters, and solve various environmental puzzles in order to progress.

Honestly I couldnt afford to play it myself but I did watch Jackseptieye's full playthrough. I very much enjoyed trying to piece together the story as many people call it the sequel Little Nightmares should have gotten. The art style and animations were beautiful. all enemies seem very much well animated and thrilling to see to have the player gripping the control for their dear life. Jack also mentioned that the haptec feedback really made him feel like he was in the realm which sounds exciting.

spoiler

Parts I very much enjoyed seeing:

• The seen where the skinsuit guy riding the bike was hilarious and very much unexpected. That's true circus comedy imo.
• Seeing all those buildings collapsed during explosions and chase scenes were a sight to see. It really made them feel very immersive when a players is locked into the game.
• The glow gratual evolution of the sheep overtime and the connection to the girl, the enemies to the very end when it becomes its own boss that basically restarts the loop all over again.
• The tank being used at the end was awesome. Nothing more to be said.

Now things I wish I was more of:

• We didnt get much out of the underwater horse looking enemy. All that happend was we took his eye and ran with it as we are being chased. I don't even thing he died becasue all we saw is that we took the eye and ran strait to the whale and never deal with e seach horse again. (idk if he even was a horse)
• I want to see more of the whale becasue that dude was long but he only unrolled a but and left off with some of himself still a bit folded. hopefully game asset hunders will dig up so we can see more.

He didn't get the secret ending tho. At least not yet. I actually saw that through another YouTuber - Gamersault. It left me with more questions. My theory did match his everything being a planned sacrifice of the girl with the only difference I have a belief of a reason why they did such a thing. I belive they did this is because they possibly promised a ticket to free their souls. After finding the coffins, we leaned how the boys have all died:

• bay head was hanged
• hood got shot
• bucket fell off a ledge
• bandage stepped on a landmine The last coffin was not of the girl but her pet rabbit as a lure. She ends up seeing the rabbits corpse at the end where she is standing a summoning circle and latter bagged up to be thrown into a well. It can't be told if they truly got their freedom but it does seem like the cycle will be repeated as the well starts to over flow with her body floating up like it did at the begining of the game.

An alternate theory I have is when she got eaten. She started to see the the sacrifice that was made when they were all alive as she does deeper into the sheeps stomach. My only possible evidence is the setting the boys were in where it was done is a cabin then a well inside the cave which didnt match with the sheeps stomach since we entered the somach with her and all we have saw was nothing but deep red lighting and wet inner flesh/ stomach intestines or whatever.

Thats all I got, Tell me your thoughts if any. Would like to hear your take :)

It's honestly kinda crazy how long some games spend in development. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy is a perfect example of something that should've been quick but ended up being so bloated and took forever to make.

FF7Remake was announced in 2015, got stuck in development hell for a bit, released 2020. The sequel released 2024. The third one still hasn't been teased yet. How many people are attached to a franchise if it takes 10 years to get the full story? I loved the first remake but dropped the second one, I just didn't care about the story as much as I did ~5 years ago.