chameleon

Another choice quote from the original IGN interview that this is from:

Sweeney: […] The only way that we can hope for new games coming into the market to be able to succeed when there’s so much Metcalfe’s Law at play and so many captive audiences in the really big games – you know, Fortnite, Roblox, PUBG Mobile, and a few other really huge ones – it’s got to be that those games get momentum by connecting to the economies in other games. I think that can really reinvigorate the market if people are constantly looking to new games and sources of new items that they can earn everywhere and be able to really easily move together with their friends.

Guy got talked into the whole blockchain NFT crap so hard that he’s still trying to make it happen, as if it was ever a desirable thing that the best way to get some kind of gear or cool cosmetics in game A involves playing game B instead.

My favorite demo this time around has been Sting & Swing. Bee golf is a cursed concept somehow turned into an Animal Well esque game.

To add to that, even the original paper written with 1999-2007 era SDRAM/DDR/DDR2 is not optimistic about the scenario of a machine that was already powered down at regular operating temperatures:

with the fastest exhibiting complete data loss in approximately 2.5 seconds and the slowest taking an average of 35 seconds

And that only got worse with more advanced RAM, not to mention that they lost almost all of the data far quicker than that with only a couple % of bits surviving that long. For all practical intents and purposes, cold boot against an already-powered-down machine is a myth, the cooling has to be applied while it’s on.

A different FAQ item mentions Winward NL Limited is in the Cayman Islands, which is a really nice place if you would want to hide such links. But yeah, could also be a bunch of individuals just looking for some extra yachts (bonus irony if they buy them from Gaben’s yacht company).

I didn’t play the demo, so I was a bit surprised to find it has less in common with Link’s Awakening and Castlevania than you might think

To me, the demo felt like it was setting up something resembling more of a Zelda game, even though the demo itself wasn’t very Zelda due to its length. Which kinda made it worse to me, I thought I would get Legend of Mouse: Oracle of Slightly Souls and unexpectedly got Mouse Souls for the Gameboy Color.

That is a game I could ultimately find enjoyment in, but at 5-ish hours into the game, I was incredibly frustrated by the difference in expectations vs what I just played. The Zelda influence does show up a bit more later in the game as dungeon/world design improves a bit, but it remains thinner than I would’ve preferred. The “Souls mechanics” can mostly be turned off via the modifiers menu, but that doesn’t really turn the game into what I would’ve preferred either.

For the right person, this is going to be a GotY candidate. I’m glad I did play it through to the end, but it’s too soulsy for me to truly appreciate it. I will say that the soundtrack very well might be my soundtrack of the year though; easily Jake Kaufman’s finest work (and the OST is pay-what-you-want on Bandcamp!).

There’s strong indications that there is going to be some minor but technically base-breaking rebalancing. Getting rid of “space casinos” (quality asteroid upcycling) and platform thruster stacking was mentioned as being ready over a year ago, but they didn’t want to break existing bases at that time. This is their last good moment for it.

With the game being out for the better part of a day now, I gotta admit, the much less positive Giant Bomb review is by far the one closest to my experience.

As far as I’m concerned, this game would have been ever so much better if Dark Souls never existed. You can turn off most “souls-like mechanics” via modifiers, but just about anything to make the experience easier turns off all achievements, which is a not-so-silent judgment from the developers for doing it. Boss runbacks are looooong, but if you’re willing to disable achievements, you can have a bonus checkpoint before every boss. So the devs really want you to do runbacks, but I struggle to see what they add to the game. Basically the same complaint as Silksong but I am even more tired of them by now, and the runbacks are worse.

Currency loss and estus flasks plasma vials don’t really add to the game, either.

I ended up wanting an online pseudonymous identity as well as an offline real-life identity, which leads to needing multiple phone numbers when things are tied to said number. That’s extremely annoying to manage, especially with Signal’s current activity and update policies that essentially require you to keep a phone in a drawer, charge it and log into it every so often or risk losing your entire account due to inactivity, as only the mobile device counts for that purpose (this might supposedly be changing).

In that particular scenario, I don’t really care if my least-favorite three-letter-agency or law enforcement can link my identities. It’s a nice bonus if they can’t, but not an absolutely required feature. The main worry is the person on the other end trivially learning it. But the person on the other end might have a different set of worries that makes Signal one of the few available options for them.

That said, Telegram also requires a phone number and has exactly the same issue, so this is a rather weird thread to bring that up.

Funny thing is this particular bill also applies semi-retroactively. The original version was worded

The following shall apply only for server-connected games published for sale on or after January 1, 2027

but in the April 6 revision that ultimately advanced, that was changed to:

The following shall apply only to a digital game available for purchase on or after January 1, 2027

I’m heavily in favor of SKG, but this particular bill isn’t workable on this schedule. It’s not what SKG has been petitioning for.

Even Sonic feels like it deserves so much better. It’s been almost 25 years of shipping 6.5/10 reviewed games, just a little bit too unfinished and just a little bit too janky for anyone to really recommend. Sales figures look OK but they’re boosted hard by being thrown in the bargain bin mere months after release.

This is of course with the exception of racing game spinoffs, which are a protest buy for when Nintendo messes up Mario Kart. And last decade’s Sonic Mania, which they didn’t make.