25,360 community articles
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Video game mechanics often have double identities, understood through one lens by the player but in an entirely different way by the designer. Currency mechanics are like that; we can spend hours selling loot and buying tools without understanding the economics the developers do. But if we want to know more about reward systems, especially those in vast multiplayer worlds, we need to understand...
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I got an Xbox Series X at launch, and it arrived broken. The hardware turned on and could connect to the Internet to download and play games and perform the other basic functions, but something was wrong with the power settings. The console wouldn’t go to sleep, instead only shutting all the way down, couldn’t be turned on with a controller, only by pressing the button on the front of the machi...
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Any good detective fiction should keep the audience guessing, placing the protagonist's power of deduction slightly ahead of everyone else's and allowing them to freely dispense the shocks and twists in the denouement of the adventure. However, with video games and the player's heightened role in same it's hard to pull that off: after all, if we're controlling the detective hero in question, sh...
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Microsoft had an event today for ID@Xbox . They showed off a bunch of games, some good looking and some not so good looking, some new and some previously announced, and at the end of it they provided a long list of the games that would be launching day 1 on Game Pass. Earlier in the month Microsoft closed their acquisition of Bethesda and held a press briefing about it. No new games were announ...
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At the beginning of the month I set myself a simple goal. Play PSVR for at least a little bit every day and blog about it. I got off to a good start and I not only found myself able to carve out the time to play the games but I was enjoying PSVR a lot more than I thought I would. I loved Moss , had a blast with a hotel smashing game , and even enjoyed a simple puzzle game partially because it w...
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I was excited when I saw that Ys: Memories of Celceta was getting a port from Vita to the PS4. I played Ys VIII last year and absolutely loved it, so I’ve been jonesing for another game in the series ever since then. I’ve been aware of Ys as long as it has existed but I never played any of them before VIII, mostly because the early games’ bump combat concept did not seem appealing. That bump co...
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Enchanted Arms A perfectly normal RPG about an anime boy with a doom arm who punches pizza golems Developer : FromSoftware Release Date : August 29, 2006 Time Played : About Two Hours Dubiosity : 3 out of 5 Problematicosity : Significant??? Would I play more ? Yes? It’s kind of serendipitous that the first two games for Season 2 of the Wheel of Dubious RPGs: “This time I have console stuff I pa...
arbitrarywater (Premium member)
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I get very influenced by the video output of the GB Team. I will completely forget how I might love to watch fighting games but rarely like playing them; only to see a clip of Jeff playing a Street Fighter game and I am re-installing every version I have, playing them for 10 minutes before promptly uninstalling them again. I love games, all sorts of games, but I am often made very aware there a...
stantongrouse (Premium member)
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I'm not sure if it's encroaching burnout or the ongoing national mood or what, but there's been some perfectly genial Indie games of the past few months that immediately started rubbing me the wrong way because of one asinine design quirk or another. Coldwood's first Unravel game, which stretches the definition of Indie given EA's involvement, is a 2D puzzle-platformer that revolves around its...
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Preamble Here we go again! Why, hello there! It has been a while since we last talked about Total War: Warhammer II's current meta in anticipation of Total War: Warhammer III, but I am happy to see you nonetheless. In case you missed it last time, I am starting a three-part series where I run down the current faction roster in Total War: Warhammer II and speculate what I think Creative Assembly...
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We Be Drummin' has been going for just about a year now, reaching 41 weeks (accounting for breaks) of intense drum action last Thursday. As the drumming has gone on, I've seen a few people wondering: " Alex has to have played most of the songs in Rock Band by now, right? Surely he's getting close.", a question which led me to wonder: "Alex has to have played most of the songs in Rock Band by no...
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If I have to give props to Mobius's Outer Wilds for one thing in particular, it's for its atmosphere. Perhaps an ironic statement, given most of the game is set in a vacuum, but Outer Wilds fills each of its locations with so much personality and backstory that you really get a sense of each one's particular pitfalls and quirks after a few visits. In fact, the game handles atmosphere and tone s...
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Coming right out with it: I just finished the PlayStation 3 (PS3) exclusive Lair . What a roller coaster ride it has been! I do mean that quite directly. Wow, has that game left me sweating and out of breath. So, before we go off the deep end, let's hang back a little, for context reasons. What's a good roller coaster without a slow climb. A while ago, I wrote about buying a lot of 45 PS3 games...
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I suppose the theme of this edition of Indie Game of the Week is déjà vu. Not just in the sense that Mobius Digital 's award-winning, space-faring adventure game Outer Wilds operates on a repeating time loop Majora's Mask style, but that I originally covered it as part of a series of GOTY contenders towards the end of 2019 whereupon I crashed and burned spectacularly due to a save corruption gl...
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The ones that are out now: Curve Racer Destruction AllStars #DRIVE (Switch Version) Taxi Chaos Monster Jam Steel Titans 2 WRC 9 (Switch Version) Can't Drive This Scheduled to release: Monster Energy Supercross: The Official Video Game 4 Beach Buggy Racing 2: Island Adventure MotoGP 2021 F1 2021 WRC 10 Hot Wheels Unleashed Racing Master (NetEase and Codemasters' new IP) RiMS Racing (RaceWard Stu...
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I get it, NFTs are bad. For the environment, for creatives, legal currencies, etc. If this isn't a way for somebody to own some data, then what is the solution? Interesting read for the weekend: http://www.theendofownership.com/
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I recently had a multi-day Internet outage due to...I'm not sure. During that time I had a couple windows where I did have Internet but it was out for the vast majority of the time and while the company eventually sent a technician nobody could really explain what the problem was. It seems to be working now. Obviously in 2021 during the pandemic that is extremely frustrating (though nowhere nea...
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I've been thoroughly enjoying my playthrough of Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age so far; the game's charming as hell and it's become something of an unfortunate rarity in this day and age to play a full-budget single-player Japanese RPG given the way priorities have shifted in that market (mostly towards MMOs, F2P, and mobile) so I intend to make it last throughout this unseasonably ch...
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This series: Part 1 . Part 2 . Part 3 . Part 4 . Along Together is the game that made me stop and ask “wait, do I actually like PSVR as a platform?” I bought one at launch, messed around with it a bit, and mostly wrote it off, but other than Dexed and to some extent Tetris Effect, every game I’ve played on it this month has been…fun? I suspect that what may have happened was that PSVR launched...
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This series: Part 1 . Part 2 . Part 3 . I came into Hotel R’n’R without a lot of expectations. I actually bought it specifically for this blog project, since it was $12 on sale and seemed like it would offer up some dumb fun. It also reviewed reasonably well. What I found was a much more polished and complete game than I expected. After the boredom of Dexed I put this on expecting to play a cou...
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This series: Part 1 . Part 2 . On day 6 of Ma[PSV]Rch I encountered my scariest enemy yet. Screen smudging. Putting the PSVR on isn’t hard but it’s very easy to rub the lenses against your forehead or cheeks or whatever while adjusting it. Skin oil can create unpleasant smudges that make everything look cloudy. I cleaned it with a microfiber cloth and that helped but apparently a lens pen is th...
