There is no more phone. There is no more world. There is only Balatro now.

Not too surprising, I imagine removing the PSN login was real close to just cracking the game entirely. Honestly not sure why people would buy the game and then use a third party tool to bypass the PSN requirement as opposed to just pirating the game to begin with.

It’s a shame that I’m a quivering pussy, because I think the combat against the replicants in FEAR fucking rules. The shooting feels awesome, slow-mo karate is awesome, the game feels awesome to play.

…and then the game goes quiet after the shooting stops, and it delivers some of the spookiest atmosphere I’ve experienced even after two decades of age. A single light fixture moves suddenly, showing the shadow of something just behind me, and I jump out of my skin and have to take a break from playing.

Their implementation of it just feels like they don’t actually want you to buy the microtransactions. In Dragon’s Dogma 2 for example, one of the most useful things you could buy is a Port Crystal, since it lets you setup a location to fast travel to and they’re reasonably rare to find. However, you can only buy one maximum, and you don’t really need them at all in the early game. By the time you would need one, you’ll have collected like 3-4, and getting an extra one would be honestly pointless. You would think that they’d change gameplay in some fashion to encourage you to spend money, but after finishing the game I had tons of all the stuff they were trying to sell.

It’s not really much of an argument, it’s just stating facts. I’m not for the microtransactions, I think it’s confusing that they would add such a thing at all, but they’ve consistently been doing it for all of their published games for nearly half a decade now. I’ve just chalked it up to a cultural difference since Capcom is an Eastern publisher, and on the sliding scale of scummy microtransactions it’s pretty close to the bottom.

This is a real valid issue. I’ve heard they finally put out a performance fix, but have not personally tried it out myself to confirm. It’s definitely the kinda game where you’ll need cutting edge tech to make it look beautiful, and it can look incredible, but that doesn’t excuse the abysmal performance on lower end hardware.

I mean, that’s just every Capcom release now. It has nothing to do with their confidence or anything, they just add pointless microtransactions because some suit at the company thinks it’s a good idea. It’s the same shit with Devil May Cry 5, all the recent Resident Evil games, literally everything they published. If that’s honestly the only thing keeping you from playing Dragon’s Dogma 2, you’re making a mistake.

I’m interested in knowing what your issues with it are. As someone who never played the first, I found it a pretty incredible and innovative RPG. Probably the biggest disappointment is just that I wish there were more monsters to fight, which I understand was a criticism of the first game until it’s Dark Arisen expansion.

I’d say the bigger problem is just that the Bethesda RPG model is completely outdated. It feels like something you’d play a decade ago, but what used to be it’s contemporaries have absolutely eclipsed it by this point. If I wanted to play just a fun easy fantasy romp, I’d go for Dragon’s Dogma 2. If I wanted an actual RPG with bones that could offer me a challenge, I’d play Elden Ring. If I’m just looking for a well-written story, I’d go play something by CD Project Red.

Bethesda’s games aren’t well written, aren’t that interesting to play, and basically cannot offer any real challenge. The only real saving grace for Skyrim has been the modding community, which has been able to continually breathe life into what would otherwise be very tired game design.

I think the record still goes to Amazon’s Crucible, which was cancelled before release after a closed-beta that nobody played.

I mean you can find recipes in this very thread, it doesn’t have to be a mystery to you.

Maybe the real Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 was the friends we bit along the way.

How do you remaster something that was intentionally broken/buggy?

Thanks for the heads up! I’m one of those weirdos who thinks Burning Crusade is like peak WoW, but it’s hard to find good private servers focused on the era.

I promise you, Everquest was plenty popular at the time, and it didn’t invent those things either.

gonna be real, WC1 was not a huge title at the time. I think a lot of people look back, rightly, at WC3 being one of the greatest RTS of all time and then think the whole series was lauded at release, but Warcraft: Orcs and Humans was just okay.

I think it had like a year long beta where people were playing before full release. I know I was personally playing in 2013.

Kinda wild to see nobody mention System Shock, the game that invented audio logs. It may seem quaint in retrospect, but at the time all shooters were in the vein of Doom, and story in a shooter was considered “like story in porn.” System Shock was not only the first to communicate the plot and next steps to the player through found audio logs, but it also filled the player in on side stories and provided characterization to the survivors on Citadel station.

The game recently got a remaster, and despite very few gameplay changes, still holds up really well in 2024. You can really see the bones of later games in it, such as story focused shooters like Bioshock or F.E.A.R. and I’d really recommend it to anyone interested in playing a great retro game.

I think the fault lies with Ubisoft and Assassin’s Creed. They really championed the idea of a bloated open world stuffed with systems that don’t really interact with each other, and now AAA gaming just keeps trying to stuff more mechanics in the pile.

Dark Souls is literally just Legend of Zelda for adults, which had a stamina system at about the same time Kings Field did. It’s honestly hilarious to me that it became known as the father of the genre, but the immediate copycats were also aiming for a similar tone to FromSoftware so I guess it’s fair.