Okay, how about a 20% preorder hold with some form of identification to prevent scalpers from having more inventory than retailers? Or does Sony like their developers not being able to sell games because a few greedy scalpers out there bought up all their supply?

For a split second I thought this was a sequel to the 2018 game and got very excited to have another chance to visit this world :(

Yep. And odds are if it gets passed it will be used selectively to target whatever people that politically-connected interest groups want squashed.

Similarly, not until I can grab a next-gen console. We’ll see what reviews say, but it sounded like the game would run terribly on current-gen consoles and I’d rather wait until I can play it on better hardware. It’ll probably have come down in price a bit too by then, which is a bonus.

Reading these 2ch responses reminds me that although humans may be separated by oceans, mountains, and huge cultural gulfs, in the end each of our societies has its fair share of internet grumps ready to piss on anything and everything.

Absolutely perfect. Very pleased that Shady made an appearance at the end.

Huh, I had no idea either platform existed but am a big interactive fiction fan. Is Twine worth the time to play with? Or was StoryNexus just that much better?

Uh, alright. Sunless Seas/Skies had fun worlds that seemed to get in their own way when it came to exploring and understanding them, and I’d always wished there were cleaner systems in those games to really let curious players drink from the firehose of lore and worldcrafting.

I haven’t seriously being trying to score a Ps5 this season, but I have been looking a fair bit for kicks during my downtime and... wow. The scalper situation is just out of control this year, which should hardly be a surprise given COVID. As others have pointed out, retailers likely DGAF since they got their pay out,…

Nintendo has always been able to think bigger than the traditional consoles, as evidenced by the Wii and—of course—by their entire series of handheld consoles, starting with the legendary Gameboy. Though for a while, from the N64 up to the Wii, it seemed like Nintendo had lost control of the conversation, allowing…

Curious what makes you say P&H are hard to work with? Not impossible to imagine, but I haven’t heard that before so I’m a bit surprised.

Votes creak in, k?

Yep, this. There’s also plenty of clean public seating in Japan, and it’s not uncommon for people to use those public spaces to eat/drink. They just won’t (a) do it while moving or (b) typically leave trash behind, which helps keep the spaces usable (and desirable).

It’s also worth considering that they (and other similar developers) want to make a great Skinner box that keeps you coming back and playing more than they want to make a game that is as good as possible. There may be certain QOL adjustments and the like that would weaken the Skinner box’s hold on people, and so they…

Ditto. I would love to see the world (or something similar) in a less grind-y, more exploration-driven / social format some day, perhaps where players are given more agency and more to do than shoot things ad nauseum. The lore is certainly interesting, it’s just not worth the slog to briefly experience it before…

Weirdly enough, while I am a total wuss when it comes to horror games and horror movies, I had almost no issue with RE7. It’s definitely tense in the beginning (and generally whenever you had to evade one of the family members), but there was something about it that softened the blow. Maybe it was how human the family…

Totally agreed, except that worryingly there are enough instances of executives not thinking about the long term viability of a company or a property they oversee. In many cases it’s a slash-and-burn attitude that shows quick growth for a few quarters, nets them and key investors a handsome bonus, and then leaves…

I might argue that streamers are more than advertisers for the games, or that we need to be more nuanced about what sort of marketing we’re talking about.

These are games, you don’t exactly need to pay Hasbro a fee if you stream people playing Dungeons and Dragons or Monopoly.

Ghost of Tsushima is a lonely game. Over the course of three lengthy acts, you might team up with computer-controlled characters, but, as Jin Sakai, the titular Ghost, are often alone.