Vidya Games Thread

[CalciumAnimal]

Trails is definitely a messy series to try and get into if not playing on PC. The Sky trilogy and the first two Cold Steel games were published by Xseed, then Falcom switched to NIS America for publishing, which is why there's no releases for the xSeed games on modern consoles. They completely skipped localizing Zero and Azure (the Crossbell duology) until recently, after Cold Steel IV was already released in the West, so people who played CS without those missed a lot of the context that happened in the Crossbell games, especially since CS1 and CS2 took place simultaneously.

Basically, someone getting into the series now without playing on PC will have gaps in the series. And as a series that is all connected through characters, stories, locations, events, etc, there's plenty of missing context because of it. The PS4 does have access to CS1 and CS2, but aside from Revierie, the Switch only has Zero, Azure, CS3, and CS4 (4, 5, 8, 9).

However, since you don't seem to mind not playing through everything, I would still recommend the other Switch titles. Even though the games are all connected, the four available on the Switch can still be enjoyed on their own. I would just recommend playing them in pairs (Zero followed by Azure, and CS3 followed by CS4) since those pairs are essentially each one game split into two parts.

makes sense and thanks for the advice ill definitly use it when i return to the series though i suspect ill grab daybreak first after Unicorn Overlord.


Oh woe is me if only i had infinite time and money.

 

[That Chuuba Enjoyer]

Finally, been wanting to play this game for years

 

[MrProcessor]

Capcom is having a publisher sale, it seems to be on both Xbox and Steam as of 03/06/2024. Not sure how long the sale is going:

Capcom Publisher Weekend on Steam

Save up to 67% on Capcom games on Steam this weekend!

store.steampowered.com

 

[Banana Hammock]

Finally, been wanting to play this game for years

Sonysisters in shambles rn

 

[chihirogumi]

Somewhat related to vidya since it involves the Sweet Baby controversy.

Archive

Archive
Unsurprisingly, the senior editor of Kotaku is a self-hating whitey who thinks she'll be considered "one of the good ones". She wrote a hitpiece on the anti-SweetBaby group that has recently formed.
Also, are the zoomers about to introduced to GamerGate 2: Electric Boogaloo? Sargon, this is your moment, you can end you employment at Applebee's now!

 

[Abomination]

Somewhat related to vidya since it involves the Sweet Baby controversy.

Archive

Archive
Unsurprisingly, the senior editor of Kotaku is a self-hating whitey who thinks she'll be considered "one of the good ones". She wrote a hitpiece on the anti-SweetBaby group that has recently formed.
Also, are the zoomers about to introduced to GamerGate 2: Electric Boogaloo? Sargon, this is your moment, you can end you employment at Applebee's now!

Yeesh. That Twitter profile pic is one of the most stereotypical ones for a Kotaku writer.

This whole Sweet Baby junk has been funny. The only reason it's gotten so loud is because the spergs that work there were crying about the Steam group. When I first checked it out, it was barely above 20k people. Now, less than a week later, it's almost at 200k people. And getting the typical journo slop to run defense isn't going to help.

However, I will agree that Sweet Baby isn't solely to blame, considering a lot of games they haven't worked on have been shit in so many aspects too. The upper echelons of the industry are rotten, and it's been very apparent lately with many AAA companies laying off so many employees and canceling projects. SB definitely helps make things shittier, but in many cases, things are already shit.

I doubt we'll see a full crash like some are hoping for, but the bigger studios may continue to rot away until they realize their shit games and shit practices are driving customers away to cheaper and better made games by smaller companies and indie groups. There's plenty of rot at that level too, but you definitely see more gems at that level than you do at the AAA level, or Ubisoft's "AAAA" level. But, as others have said, if there is a crash, I've got a enough of a backlog on Steam, the Switch, and tons of roms to emulate to keep me entertained for a long time, so I'd be fine with a crash.

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

Also, are the zoomers about to introduced to GamerGate 2: Electric Boogaloo?

Oh shit, I just realized with the media jumping to run defense for SB, we just might see that just in time for this year's election.

Yeesh. That Twitter profile pic is one of the most stereotypical ones for a Kotaku writer.

This whole Sweet Baby junk has been funny. The only reason it's gotten so loud is because the spergs that work there were crying about the Steam group. When I first checked it out, it was barely above 20k people. Now, less than a week later, it's almost at 200k people. And getting the typical journo slop to run defense isn't going to help.

However, I will agree that Sweet Baby isn't solely to blame, considering a lot of games they haven't worked on have been shit in so many aspects too. The upper echelons of the industry are rotten, and it's been very apparent lately with many AAA companies laying off so many employees and canceling projects. SB definitely helps make things shittier, but in many cases, things are already shit.

I doubt we'll see a full crash like some are hoping for, but the bigger studios may continue to rot away until they realize their shit games and shit practices are driving customers away to cheaper and better made games by smaller companies and indie groups. There's plenty of rot at that level too, but you definitely see more gems at that level than you do at the AAA level, or Ubisoft's "AAAA" level. But, as others have said, if there is a crash, I've got a enough of a backlog on Steam, the Switch, and tons of roms to emulate to keep me entertained for a long time, so I'd be fine with a crash.

Yeah, I think the industry is going to tank but I don't think a crash similar to the last one is going to happen. When people think of the 83' crash, they don't realize the industry revenue was at $3.2 billion in 1983 and tanked to $100 million by 1985 for a 97% drop. We're not going to see something like that but we're going to see the big AAA devs start to dissolve due to them hemorrhaging money. These insane budgets for hundreds of millions of dollars, surpassing film budgets, is not going to pan out. These big publishers and studios are burning through the last of their goodwill at record speed, which will only see colossal issues as they continue to put out stinkers.

For comparison, the X-men film series has always been a great example of how hype and expectation drives sales.

Spoiler: X-men film numberfagging

The first X-men made $296 million and was by all means a good film, especially for the time it came out. The second film, X2, was riding on that hype and was a great film, making $407 million. However the third film, Last Stand, was dogshit but it didn't matter because it was riding on the coattails of two successful films, leading to $460 million. While the opening weekend was the fourth-highest opening weekend of all time, the second weekend saw a 67% drop, which was a record for steepest post-Memorial Day opening drop.

The third film was known for being dogshit but audience confidence in the series was still quite high and the hype around a Wolverine film caused X-men Origins: Wolverine to make $373 million. The problem is that now that there were 2 stinkers in a row, a good film like First Class came around and suffered for it as it only made $352 million. The Wolverine came out and it was a much better Wolverine solo film, had the hype of coming off of First Class as people started to gain hope in the series again, and ended up making $414 million. Then Bryan Singer, the director for the good first 2 films that started the series, came back for Days of Future Past. People were hyped over to have Singer back, comic nerds had hyped up the storyline of DOFP as a huge point in the comics and that it could unfuck the mistakes in the series, and the film was riding off the success of two good (at the very least passable) X-Men films. So now DOFP suddenly made $746 million.

The main point is that a product's initial sales, if its part of a franchise/series, will be driven not so much by the product itself but by the success of its predecessors and the confidence the audience has in the creator. An audience may forgive a fuckup but once it starts to hurt their confidence in the series, that's when shit goes south. That's where we're heading with the big publishers and studios in the video game industry. We already saw this play out with TLOU2 selling 10 million copies over 2 years but 4 million sales were opening weekend sales due to the hype from the first game. If these big companies keep fucking up, we're going to be seeing a lot less "record-breaking sales" being announced every 4 months.

 

[John Vtuber👁️]

all the journalists had to do was ignore the steam group, and it would never have escalated as it has - they're even dropping articles around the same time as each other again

this is how we get Trump to tweet about GamerGate 2.0

 

[Banana Hammock]

I don't think Jim's going to wait for the cancer, if GamerGate 2 actually starts.

 

[CalciumAnimal]

Yeesh. That Twitter profile pic is one of the most stereotypical ones for a Kotaku writer.

This whole Sweet Baby junk has been funny. The only reason it's gotten so loud is because the spergs that work there were crying about the Steam group. When I first checked it out, it was barely above 20k people. Now, less than a week later, it's almost at 200k people. And getting the typical journo slop to run defense isn't going to help.

However, I will agree that Sweet Baby isn't solely to blame, considering a lot of games they haven't worked on have been shit in so many aspects too. The upper echelons of the industry are rotten, and it's been very apparent lately with many AAA companies laying off so many employees and canceling projects. SB definitely helps make things shittier, but in many cases, things are already shit.

I doubt we'll see a full crash like some are hoping for, but the bigger studios may continue to rot away until they realize their shit games and shit practices are driving customers away to cheaper and better made games by smaller companies and indie groups. There's plenty of rot at that level too, but you definitely see more gems at that level than you do at the AAA level, or Ubisoft's "AAAA" level. But, as others have said, if there is a crash, I've got a enough of a backlog on Steam, the Switch, and tons of roms to emulate to keep me entertained for a long time, so I'd be fine with a crash.

since it's been brought up again i also want to point out that not everything sweet baby touches is poison (like the steam group implies) BG:3 was largely good and I highly doubt they had much to do with AC Valhalla being shit (the writing was already rock bottom)

Spoiler: X-men film numberfagging

The first X-men made $296 million and was by all means a good film, especially for the time it came out. The second film, X2, was riding on that hype and was a great film, making $407 million. However the third film, Last Stand, was dogshit but it didn't matter because it was riding on the coattails of two successful films, leading to $460 million. While the opening weekend was the fourth-highest opening weekend of all time, the second weekend saw a 67% drop, which was a record for steepest post-Memorial Day opening drop.

The third film was known for being dogshit but audience confidence in the series was still quite high and the hype around a Wolverine film caused X-men Origins: Wolverine to make $373 million. The problem is that now that there were 2 stinkers in a row, a good film like First Class came around and suffered for it as it only made $352 million. The Wolverine came out and it was a much better Wolverine solo film, had the hype of coming off of First Class as people started to gain hope in the series again, and ended up making $414 million. Then Bryan Singer, the director for the good first 2 films that started the series, came back for Days of Future Past. People were hyped over to have Singer back, comic nerds had hyped up the storyline of DOFP as a huge point in the comics and that it could unfuck the mistakes in the series, and the film was riding off the success of two good (at the very least passable) X-Men films. So now DOFP suddenly made $746 million.

Counterpoint IM THE JUGGERNAUT BITCH! i'm not kidding memes can drive sales and while it was a minor movement compared to the Morbin id still chalk about 60k up to it. even if im off by 30k thats still a noticeable drop compared to the second movie almost doubling sales.

all the journalists had to do was ignore the steam group, and it would never have escalated as it has - they're even dropping articles around the same time as each other again

this is how we get Trump to tweet about GamerGate 2.0

but why miss a chance to cope and seethe.

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

BG:3 was largely good

I haven't seen anything that showed they worked on BG3, just that they listed Wizards of the Coast as a client. I know WotC has done some supremely retarded woke shit with MtG but if they had Sweet Baby brought to work on BG3, I doubt their ability to negatively affect was of any substantial degree due to how fucking colossally huge BG3 is. SB will have an easier time fucking with a game with a 20-30 hr campaign vs a game where people can spend over 100 hrs in just the first act.

I highly doubt they had much to do with AC Valhalla being shit (the writing was already rock bottom)

I actually don't blame Sweet Baby for AC Valhalla because the AC devs have become supremely woke since a lot of the old creators left over time.
Syndicate: There were two twin player characters, Jacob and Evie, that you swap between like GTA5. It was suppose to be a split evenly between them but corporate came in and said to focus more on Jacob and the marketing reflected that with him being in the front of the box art while Evie's off to the side.
Origins: You play as Bayek for pretty much the whole game until you play a short section as his wife, Aya. The devs originally planned to kill Bayek in the first few hours after playing him and then force you to play as Aya for the rest. Corporate intervened again and told them to fuck off, which resulted in Aya becoming a side character.
Odyssey: You were suppose to play as the female Kassandra while her twin brother Alexios was the main villain. Corporate came in, told them to have a male choice. So now when you start the game, you can choose to play as Alexios, which makes Kassandra the main villain. Ubisoft Quebec (Odyssey and Syndicate devs) still seethe about this and take every opportunity to point out that "Kassandra is the canon choice" as an act of rebellion.
Valhalla: There's a male and female version of the main character, Eivor. There's also a section where you play as Odin, Eivor's past life. Besides the "choose male or female", there's the "let the animus" choose. The third option makes you play as female Eivor during the main game but male Eivor during the small Odin section. They likely didn't intend to make a male Eivor but were forced by management and they just grabbed the Odin VA to do the work.

There was a leak (between Odyssey and Valhalla I believe) that revealed all this stuff about corporate continuously intervening to stop the devs from being turbo fags. Supposedly Ubisoft Quebec (Odyssey and Syndicate devs) are making the next Assassin's Creed set in Feudal Japan and the rumored 2 PC characters are a female samurai and African ninja (stand proud @Short). At this point, I 100% believe that rumor because it's 100% in line with their turbo woke mindset of "I bet we can make people play the female character by making the alternative a negro!"

As the cherry on top, I fully expect the stats to later reveal that the negro was played more.

 

[Superduper Samurai]

I haven't seen anything that showed they worked on BG3, just that they listed Wizards of the Coast as a client. I know WotC has done some supremely retarded woke shit with MtG but if they had Sweet Baby brought to work on BG3, I doubt their ability to negatively affect was of any substantial degree due to how fucking colossally huge BG3 is. SB will have an easier time fucking with a game with a 20-30 hr campaign vs a game where people can spend over 100 hrs in just the first act.

Some randy NPCs are black and gay, thats pretty much it (so, Fable tier and the final Fable was released more than a decade ago)
Depending on who you ask this was pretty forced but i cant be the judge of that ngl
I can buy Sweet Baby doing shit for other aspects of DnD because modern DnD is one of the most flip flopping products ive seen in trying to appeal to both normies and woketards, and that seems to be very much in line with Sweet Baby's MO

 

[PleaseCheckYourReceipts]

Some randy NPCs are black and gay, thats pretty much it (so, Fable tier and the final Fable was released more than a decade ago)
Depending on who you ask this was pretty forced but i cant be the judge of that ngl
I can buy Sweet Baby doing shit for other aspects of DnD because modern DnD is one of the most flip flopping products ive seen in trying to appeal to both normies and woketards, and that seems to be very much in line with Sweet Baby's MO

SBI (and other narrative consultants) are more symptom than disease. They're functionally going to be replaced by AI anyway because they're really just fill-in writers. But the fact they're even involved in the projects is a sign of deep dysfunction.

 

[CalciumAnimal]

I haven't seen anything that showed they worked on BG3, just that they listed Wizards of the Coast as a client. I know WotC has done some supremely retarded woke shit with MtG but if they had Sweet Baby brought to work on BG3, I doubt their ability to negatively affect was of any substantial degree due to how fucking colossally huge BG3 is. SB will have an easier time fucking with a game with a 20-30 hr campaign vs a game where people can spend over 100 hrs in just the first act.

Are they not in BG3's credits? that implies at least some consulting for the game even if the advice was ignored. But i'm also 90% sure they also "consulted" on 5th edition and "one D&D" so that might explain it if i'm misremembering ?

 

[MrProcessor]

Somewhat related to vidya since it involves the Sweet Baby controversy.

Archive

Archive
Unsurprisingly, the senior editor of Kotaku is a self-hating whitey who thinks she'll be considered "one of the good ones". She wrote a hitpiece on the anti-SweetBaby group that has recently formed.
Also, are the zoomers about to introduced to GamerGate 2: Electric Boogaloo? Sargon, this is your moment, you can end you employment at Applebee's now!

Kotaku was the original way they tried to push this stuff into games, Sweet Baby is the new way. This "journalist" is probably hoping to get a job there if she does a good job defending them.

SBI (and other narrative consultants) are more symptom than disease. They're functionally going to be replaced by AI anyway because they're really just fill-in writers. But the fact they're even involved in the projects is a sign of deep dysfunction.

AI can replace them, but only if the people training the AI are exactly like them.

However, I will agree that Sweet Baby isn't solely to blame, considering a lot of games they haven't worked on have been shit in so many aspects too. The upper echelons of the industry are rotten, and it's been very apparent lately with many AAA companies laying off so many employees and canceling projects. SB definitely helps make things shittier, but in many cases, things are already shit.

A counterpoint though is that if you want gamers to buy Luthorcoin as part of your predatory pricing model, the rest of the game had better be enjoyable. I hate those predatory pricing models, and wish they didn't exist, but even I will occasionally feel the pull of a good looking gatcha. But Suicide Squad? I can't imagine playing it even if I were a streamer wanting to milk it for content.

 

[reinigen]

 

[The Rrat]

Bandai, you faggots, stop whoring out this anime and ruining its legacy.

 

[That Chuuba Enjoyer]

Lol, lmao even.

 

[God's Strongest Mozumite]

Lol, lmao even.

$70? This shitshow of a game normally costs 70 FUCKING U.S. DOLLARS?!?!

 

[The Rrat]

Lol, lmao even.

?