I appreciate that the other games, even if they’re 90% power fantasy, retain a tiny bit of that nihilism in the story of each game.

3: Jason becomes totally disconnected from society and almost feels like he can’t come back from the killing. 4: Help the rebels, and they become despots just like Pagan Min. Give up on the rebellion at the beginning of the game, and even Min admits he’s tired of the cycle. 5 I won’t even spoil, definitely a bit less of an artistic message even if it’s a huge twist.

Alright, I’m guessing there’s going to be some ready conspiracy theories; but the article suggests this was likely caused by a malfunctioning boiler. That’s bizarre and unfortunate, but hopefully didn’t lead to anyone getting hurt.

I want this level of self reflection when we look back at headlines like: “Did you know a child-raping terrorist that bankrupted every one of his businesses said he wants to invade Greenland!? See the 24-hour perpetual interview!!11”

I mean, Kleiner saying “I had expected more warning!” is a sort of mixed surprise. If he’s been gone for 20+ years, the natural reaction I might expect is “What…? That’s impossible! We all thought you were dead! Or lost in Xen forever!” Heck, even Kleiner’s reaction to the “slow teleport” you and Alyx take late in the game is much grander. “I had…given up hope of ever seeing you again!!”

That feels like a bit of a hate train on SOMA that’s not really relevant. We often dislike character idiocy, especially when it’s our player. But speaking protagonists can be done well - Dead Space 2 made the move, and even ported it back when they finally did a DS1 remake.

Perhaps the only major issue with using environmental storytelling to give City 17’s base exposition is that the game is both a sequel, and intended as an entry point. I remember as a kid playing HL2 (with very little knowledge of HL1) and as soon as I saw the aliens in gas masks corralling everyone, really wondered what sort of story I missed in the first one. Leaving people to figure things out is definitely cool, I’m just offering ways to point out clearly that you, the player, didn’t miss anything key, because in today’s media deluge, often the reason for that feeling is because a story is slapdash and poorly written - as opposed to simply hiding the details in plain sight for the player to find.

Interestingly, there are some notes in an art book where the G-Man originally gave a longer opening speech to explain what’s happened in your absence, but they removed it. Overall it was probably the right move, but I’m curious how it would have felt.

It tends not to give you enough to last an entire fight with the ammo you have on hand, but usually if you’re pushed into an arena, it will have ammo and health laying around - and not the light stuff, either. The game was coming from a Doom 3 era when ammo searching was not just a known habit, but could be done during a fight to keep you moving, so it’s perhaps an implied assumption they made from the time. But, teaching players anything while they’re under fire is going to be a very uphill battle I suppose.

Autocorrect has been extremely vicious today about anything that’s not in a 20-year-old dictionary.

I’m ambivalent on it, but definitely not negative. I hate that everyone watching big game shows is hoping to see “Ratchet & Kratos 7” or “Dark Lore 5” or “Metal Gear Sonic 11”. Especially since, as you know, every decent mid level game developer these days has been fired at least once by morons with MBAs, and so the industry must make new IPs from the scattered devs.

Its art doesn’t speak for itself, I think on multiplayer it usually doesn’t. We’ll have to see how it feels later.

I still like its facial animation more than most Danes. They had tools that even set up random NPCs to have full lipsync and expressions for minor lines, without a mocap studio. Most AAA work these days doesn’t have that, or they dedicate such animation to when you’re in a zoomed in view to receive quests.

I will say that even then, it was missing a bit of “acknowledgment”. Kleiner and Alyx don’t even question where you came from or what you should be doing now you’ve suddenly arrived.

Some of that could be as simple as, if Gordon was non-silent, have him wonder questions while wandering C17: “What the…how long have I been gone? What the hell happened to Earth?”

I think the pistol and SMG are intended to feel weak, to push you into other weapons that take more interesting use. For instance, half an SMG clip into a soldier could instead be one launch of a barrel from the gravity gun. Notably, you only see those soldiers after getting the gravity gun.

If you’re referring to the early cops, about half of them are around some tricky environmental kill, like an explosive barrel. But, I’ll grant there are times you’d desperately spend a magazine to land headshots with the pistol. So, I guess you’re not wrong.

No, that’s the PlayStation -1.

As scummy as they are, they kind of have a point there. Infuriating to think how many missed chances have passed to improve Americans’ lives because of a 49-51 vote.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLx2VEx0LmA

I mean, if Hytale disappears from package managers, you still have the version of it installed locally, right? And, the game operates offline.

The most notable example of malware findings was a cancer patient whose whole crypto wallet was stolen. While this sounds like a “once in a blue moon” thing, it was also said on that occasion that the malicious game in question had been around for weeks with no action from Valve. Even acknowledging that Valve isn’t a security company, VXUnderground said in their report of the incident: “Valve allowed this malware to exist for just under a month. This is appalling levels of vetting, how can you let such brazen malware exist on your platform. Review the later sections for proof of when the malware was inserted.”

This was the notable case, but it’s very likely other similar malware pushes onward. Just take a look at the amount of AI sex-focused slop coming onto Steam in January.

It is convenient, by all means, but I would hardly say a game being on Steam by default makes it “trusted”.

The Chad move would be to have one such scene that looks normal to casual observers, but then turns out the hacker has an automated scanning tool running in the background of the screen, while they’re just typing nonsense in the command prompt.

Why is news site reporting what the rapist terrorist said? Who gives a flying fuck what threats a felon gives?

Kim Jong Un wants you not to piss in his coffee. You laugh, you don’t give it a fucking headline.

Something I just realized is that this fits exactly with the “Only happens in production” issues many coders run into.

Anyone in the studio would obviously install all the DLC, since they need to test its contents. They’d also run habitual tests without the DLC to verify it’s not necessary, and that it passes basic checks. But, they wouldn’t do that often. Same with how, say, many webapps run internally without the 80 MB of tracking scripts.

I guess this isn’t really even “news” to Linux gamers now, but once in a while it’s nice to make an article about what constant progress has happened in a certain sphere. Certainly many people staying on Windows out of inertia blinked and missed it.

My fervent hope is that, someday in the future, people can build a gaming PC and just forego Windows to save $100.

One of the ones I remember the most is in the original COD4: Modern Warfare. A blog highlighted so savagely the fact that your squad is sent down to rescue a female chopper pilot who’s been downed and wounded. Then, a nuke goes off, killing everyone, suggesting they could have gotten out of the blast radius if they didn’t save her - meaning a woman in distress was the death of the whole squad. The blog lambasted Infinity Ward for giving such a horrible treatment to the game’s only major female character.

Of course, that’s a relatively disingenuous interpretation. That same mission has you rescuing whole squads of pinned soldiers moments before (all men). The chopper pilot gets her great moments of heroism in the process. And it’s very likely the writers intended for the squad to be killed by a nuke no matter what happens.

And there have probably been COD games out there with NO notable women in them. So somehow, the move to include one in this particular game struck them as worse than if they’d done nothing at all.