peppersky [he/him, any]

they all make you pay for online now

videogames as the youngest of all media is obviously going to get hit the hardest by capitalism draining it of its lifeblood for the last few percentages of profit. the only thing that has seen actual progress in videogame design is how “engaging” (or psychologically manipulative and addictive) they can make them and for that you don’t need any technological prowess (although the idea of technological progress leading in any linear way to more innovation has always been suspect to me, gamers only being able to imagine “more destruction” and “better ai” as markers of progress seems emblematic of that fact)

if games like the newest god of war (ostensibly a serious story driven game) needs a seven people “player investment design team”, celebrated games like “death stranding” are gamified like any mobile or clicker game and even indie devs make “pls lobotomize me for the next thirty minutes” stuff like vampire survivors you can basically give up on the medium. there’s no ambition in any of these companies that goes above “we need to get those engagement numbers up”. and if engagement is the goal, it’s stupid to make more games than you need to. you can only play one game at a time.

the only devs i have any interest in nowadays are fromsoft and nintendo (and that’s only the nintendo that makes mario and zelda games) and maybe the occasional indie game (although they mostly suck too)

exactly, like its cool that mgs has both whacky fourth-wall breaking conversations about how eating glowing mushrooms recharges your batteries, long discussions about old hollywood films and long philosophical musings, but maybe they shouldn’t all be presented the same way

It’s high time to stop thinking that any sort of change can be enacted in the terms of what is “officially” called “politics”. Who is sitting in the white House is irrelevant to whatever we need to do

MGS2 and 3s plot getting told almost entirely within codex conversations does make following whatever political points they try to make pretty difficult

yeah dark souls 2 and 3 suck, really good thing elden ring isn’t part of the dark souls series

Weird how a game that’s not part of the dark souls series of games is not 100% the same as the dark souls games.

Like yeah everything in elden Ring is more flashy than in dark souls pretty sure that’s on purpose because it’s a different game doing a different thing

The US has always been a genocidal fascist apartheid state. You’ve never once been able to not vote for genocide

I’m watching Voyager and there’s an episode where one of the characters goes to the brig for thirty days and when he complains to the ships doctor that he is going crazy the doctor just answers: “that’s the idea.”

Voyager really kinda sucks

I don’t want 80s style music, I want 2024 music. And believe me it’s not like I’m not looking

just be a sensible person and pirate everything that you can pirate

everything is fucking terrible and nothing is fun anymore

nah i can do without the guitars

I’ve played through the game with a friend of mine a few months ago and had a great time. I’ve tried playing the RE4 remake but couldn’t be bothered after realizing fifteen minutes in that it’s just the same game over and over again. RE2 remake was fun, but I was already over that game the second I started one of the other campaigns.

i only wish the kids would start making good music

It’s the best videogame thing of the year, but there’s also like genuinely no competition (well except maybe if the new Zelda is really good (which it probably will be) (ok also stalker 2 might be good)).

It genuinely makes me feel like the base game wasn’t half of what they wanted to ship: The map design and openness of the DLC make the base game map feel ancient and like a giant compromise. It’s definitely the closest they’ve gotten to Dark Souls 1 in terms of level design, while also being an open-world game. Dark Souls 1 was a bunch of winding paths that cut through a world, Dark Souls 2 was just nonsense, Dark Souls 3 were like plates of level put next to each other, base game Elden Ring was one really big really wide corridor. The DLC is like a bunch of winding paths all stacked on top of another. There’s so much verticality to it and so many twists and branches to every path you can take. That alone makes it 100% worthwhile.

I find the “oh there’s nothing to find in the world boo-hoo it’s so empty” complaints to be ridiculous. I guess that’s what happens when every other game that comes out nowadays is skinner-box first and game second. The game is fun to play, the world is fun to explore, I don’t need a dopamine treat every five minutes. The game is better for not giving you one. I don’t need to see number go up. Stop playing shit like vampire survivors or balatro, your brain will thank you.

If you haven’t played the original I see very little reason to not just play that instead. It’s cheaper, runs much much better and there’s shockingly little in the sequel that really is noticeably different or improved upon. I’ve played like 15 hours of Dragons Dogma 2 and genuinely regret the money I spent on it.

Dragons Dogma 1 was cool in 2012 when there was basically no other open-world-rpg with decent combat, but in a world where Elden Ring and its DLC exists, Dragons Dogma feels ridiculously behind the times.

after outer worlds was billed as “new vegas in outer space” only to be the most watered down version of that it could possibly be, I’m really not hoping for much. I’ll see what the reviews say and might pirate it then

why does every movie have to be 2½ hours

because then cinemas don’t have the time to play anything other than the shit hollywood studios pull out of their asses

Usually easy modes in fromsoft games are a limited resource, humanity for summoning players that also puts you at risk of invasion or finite use healing items to use when you run out of flasks (not ds2) the concept was to make the game easier there needed to be a risk nothing was given for free.

Was there actually ever any game after Demon Souls where the coop enabling item wasn’t in some way farmable, if just by helping other players in coop?

I do feel like spirit ashes are just a continuation of From making coop play easier and easier while at the same time giving offline players coop-like options. Dark Souls 1 already introduced NPC summons and added tons of ways to farm humanity (including giving the player passive soft humanity just from beating enemies), Spirit Ashes are simply way to allow the player to almost always have a summon available, while also integrating them into the loot and progression system.

Elden Ring certainly does feel like the bosses are tuned for you to either be in coop or use the summons, but I feel that the game encouraging you to use any option you have when interacting with the world is more in tune with the spirit of these games than the 1v1, no summons, no magic, sword only mindset some players have. It just obviously sucks when a boss is impossible when playing solo and a cakewalk when using summons, but for the most part they get the balance somewhat in the middle.

I’ve only beaten two of the rememberance bosses in the DLC so far and while I did use both the NPC summons and the mimic tear for them, both fights ended with both of my summons dead and me without healing items, making for a pretty tense finish, which seems pretty much perfect.