That’s the guy Julianos got his name from right? IIRC divines are aliases of the old Bethesda team.

I’ve been replaying Dragon Quest Builders 2. The game isn’t voiced, most of dialogues are classic RPG text boxes that you can speed up and skip, BUT. There are special lines of dialogue that are “voices” in a character’s head.

They are unskippable, and they’re like a dozen words each that stay on screen for about 20 seconds or more. Some of those dialogues have about 6-7 of those. It’s unbearable, and it’s genuinely the worst part of starting a game again. Hell, it was the worst part of doing it the first time, too.

Somehow English localisation created this, in Japanese the messages go a lot faster. Though even those couldn’t be skipped, because… fuck you that’s why.

Bayonetta games do. Opens a specific pause menu with skipping option.

If we’re complaining about bad UX, and speaking about Soul Reaver, games with no subtitle option. Or bad, unreadable subtitles that spoil 2 minutes of dialogue at once (and that one’s for you, Bioshock).

The availability of old stuff is not and has never been their problem. Not any more than for books or music or whatever. Lost media happens, but by accident and/or lack of interest, not by design.

Beyond some video game companies I can’t think of any that would dare claim that old works should expire.

You mean like how the blockbuster movie industry is in a crisis because most people prefer watching VHS of movies from the 1980s rather than watching the latest Marvel movie?

That doesn’t happen, that’s not how any cultural medium works. Enthusiasts keeping old stuff running are a minority. Also they are likely to consume a lot, give them a new take on what they like and they’ll gladly try it… If it’s good enough.

Of course, that’s the real problem. Some companies dream of wiping out everything that came before so their newest enshittified predatory crap doesn’t suffer from the comparison.

I can think of one, the one where they announced they were so proud of that new studio they had just created.

But they just closed that very studio and it couldn’t deliver even one game in between, so… Yeah.

That’s the “Quadruple A” studio right? The one that was supposed to have “unlimited budget” so it could create “groundbreaking video game experiences”?

And they ended up not releasing anything before they’re shut down. A+ management there, Microsoft.

I mean, it’s true. Killing game services in a way which ensures people have absolutely no way to use the games they bought is… a choice.

And now a million Europeans have just officially expressed that they don’t agree with “developers” (really, publisher higher-ups) being free to choose that.

Yeah, it’s absurd. Lots of games just warn in their licence agreement that they don’t control the experience you get from user-created content and online interactions. It’s all it takes for them, especially if they don’t even host that content on their own servers.

One line of EULA is probably enough to state the right holder is not responsible for what happens in private servers.

Not a problem, dragons are extinct. or invisible. Or flying so high you can’t see them.

I won’t say where I saw one. Maybe I did not.

Dragon Quest Builders (2) attempted something between RPG and minecraft-style building, and at least it released. It looks pretty good for a blocky game, it has spectacular block and item diversity, and great building tools. As a mostly creative game with a bunch of silly NPC villager interactions, it’s fun.

Unfortunately, there’s only the hint of a great base/town builder in there, but it’s too shallow in the end. You’ve got different classes of NPC villagers with needs and skills, but there’s no challenge, only the satisfaction of seeing your town run sort of well.

Story mode also teaches you to build defenses and traps against monster attacks but monster raids are scripted and very dumb. After the story ends and you get into full free build mode, you’ll never have a monster raid again, making it all basically useless.

And also there’s very little procedural gen in the game. Main islands are big, but static. Small islands are procedural each with a set biome, but their primary goal is to be destroyed for materials. You can only save 3 of them to use them as (small-ish) new landmasses for your builds.

That makes absolutely no sense. Nintendo does enough shit that you don’t need to invent some.

Console wars have never been about doing the exact same shit. Game boy Vs Game Gear? N64 Vs Playstation Vs Saturn? Even SNES and Megadrive/Genesis had very different designs, and that’s enough to be noticeable in the games if you are familiar enough with them.

They sell video game systems and games, they’re competitors. So is Valve. So was freaking Ouya.

The fact they’re doing thing differently enough that they’re not completely interchangeable is the competition.

Yes please. If it’s not kitsch, weird and/or flashy as hell, it’s not true ESC. There was a year when it was like almost everyone had agreed to sent their most boring crap, it was terrible.

Kinda ironic for someone with that last name.

Céline Dion did one. Not for Canada, though.

If they qualify for one or two more Eurovisions, they can use that as a proof of European-ness I’d say.

Must be reassuring when your government announces they won’t label you a traitor and throw you in a cell for playing a random video game.

Uh. I was aware of Dinosaur Planet and how Nintendo had Rare rework it into a Star Fox game, but I had no idea that an almost complete beta version of it had been found.

It’s lacking the ending and it was already on the way to starfoxization though it seems.

It’s the game that was already said to be overflowing with shitty abandoned player bases even though it was in closed beta, right? And their answer was like, “be responsible, players, destroy your own base when you don’t want it anymore”.

This is going to be… interesting.