

What’s stopping you?
Living fossil.
Also on: @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]


What’s stopping you?


Inertia is a hell of a thing. Also TikTok has one of the most efficient algorithms of any social media, and I doubt it would be easily replicated. Especially if you’re doing it in the classic Fediverse spirit of trying to be non-invasive, non-addictive, caring for the users’ privacy etc.


Yeah, and that’s really the crux of it. To 90% of people, the content is all that matters. That’s why comments like: “hey, you like TikTok? Why don’t you try Loops instead?” or “Check out Pixelfed, it’s a bit like Instagram!” are unlikely to work. For most people, it’s just a strictly worse version. The same thing but without the content. Why would they downgrade for no reason?
You have to care about something external to the core experience of consuming content to actually be here. That’s why our population at the moment is, well, just us here *gestures around.* You have to care about FOSS, or decentralisation, or anti-corporatism, or really value the more human interactions you get in a smaller setting with fewer bots, or actually enjoy putting in more work and get less served to you by an algorithm.
Most of the people with those values I believe will eventually trickle over here naturally. The rest though, this is a really hard sell for.


If anyone knew, you wouldn’t have to ask. Everyone’d already been here.


Damn, losing your saved games like that absolutely sucks. I’m so sorry. I’m glad you got to experience most of it, at least. The lost film in the cinema is so good too, almost more audacious than the We Sing chapter is shoving a whole ass European art house short film in there haha.


The first one or two bosses are alright, I think. I’m pretty sure you can parry all their attacks. But I can see what you mean, there is definitely a very simple design behind a lot of the bosses in vanilla. None of them were really super fun, but they also weren’t really all that difficult so I guess that’s why I didn’t think too much of it. I died way more to the environment than to any boss, except Isidora. She got my ass like 50 times. Though to be fair I never did the rest of the DLC so there may well be another equally tough boss there.
But yeah, the game seems to really lean into the whole “virtue of suffering” theme - which works great with the story, world building and vibe and all, it’s just… not necessarily fun.


I absolutely love the art, music, story and world building in Blasphemous, but I could also not really vibe with the gameplay. Way too much platforming combined with instant kill hazards and janky ledge//ladder grabbing. Also enemy placement that seems deliberately designed to waste your time and prevent you from rushing through areas, even when you backtrack.
I didn’t have much issue with the bosses though, at least in the main game. Isidora from the DLC was a fucking pain, though.


I finished The Drifter yesterday. It took me three weeks to get through a 10-hour game, that tells you a bit about how little I’ve been gaming lately. Anyway.
Game is absolutely great. 9.9/10, a must-play if you like the genre of point-and-click adventure games, and a game you should seriously consider even if you don’t.
I’ve already waxed lyrical about it in past weekly threads, so I am not going to repeat myself here. All I can add is that the game does stick the landing.
From what I have played, this is the most logical puzzle game ever. There were only something like 5 convoluted puzzles over the course of the whole game, and even those did make some sense in retrospect. Besides those five I got stuck on, I was able to figure out the rest of the game without outside help, and everything felt like it was logical and made sense.
The story is a lot of fun, it was more sci-fi than I expected but I don’t really mind it. It’s a breakneck pulp thriller and it keeps throwing curve balls at you, there is always a twist and turn and you never know what to expect. The writing is super sharp, it’s witty and fun and the dialogue is great. In the latter half there were a couple of voice actors that were only okay, but the rest of the cast is absolutely top shelf and the protagonist especially is great.
Overall I can’t say enough good things about it. The conclusion is satisfying, the main theme of the OST hitting with its heavy synths at a climactic moment was epic and there is even an emotional arc.
Play it, it’s fantastic. Even if you don’t like puzzle games, the story and presentation is great, so if you have to look up a few hints or solutions then so what? You’ll have a good time regardless.


It’s an inherent problem with having both users and communities on the same instances, and just how humans tend to operate in general in that we automatically gravitate to others and clump together.
I think it was @[email protected] who was saying that in an ideal world there would be two types of instances, one for users and one that only served as hosting space for communities. That way you could block or defederate user groups without losing access to entire communities.
Of course, we’re way past the point where reorganization into a structure like that is feasible. But it’s interesting to think about.
Welcome back! Hope you’re doing well :)
I already own it, still haven’t finished it though. If you love parrying and Soulslike Metroidvanias and don’t hate backtracking and platforming this is for you. Really cool graphics and art direction, too. World building is interesting. It’s a good game. Maybe one day I’ll finish it.


It’s a great game. In some ways I might even prefer it to Human Revolution. Also, make sure you do the DLCs after. A Criminal Past is some of the best “new Deus Ex” they ever produced.


I don’t know, I know what you’re saying and I’ve heard some other people complain about the same thing. I kind of didn’t mind it. Since they’re used pretty sparingly and only in association with the overlaps to signify reality being rewritten and to ratchet up the tension I felt like it was okay. They wanted to build a bit of tension-release flow and this isn’t a game where you can have zombies conveniently jump out from behind a bookshelf or whatnot. I don’t know. I enjoyed the scares (especially in the retirement home, Cynthia’s face is just terrifying hahaha) but I can’t explain why it worked for me since I agree that on paper it’s “cheap”.


I’m happy with my instance, with my admins and with my /local feed. And with Lemmy at large. It is not a feature that’s critical for me (I am unaffected as I only use my phone for Lemmy anyway).
But thank you anyway!


You can copy paste the URL into you instance’s search box.
But I do think we also need this feature https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/2318
Since I use my phone for Lemmy 100% of the time I sometimes forget what a massive issue this is. A feature like that strikes me as critical.


The Lake House DLC is great, nice tight survival horror and a great commentary on Gen AI to boot.
I’m glad you’re having some more fun with Saga at least. I found the retirement home to be an awesome horror level, some of the best scares in the game there and some nice creepy atmosphere. Dilapidated hospitals are clichés maybe, but they are so for a reason. And I don’t know, I still found it effective.


Man, while you’re running Xemu you gotta throw in Ninja Gaiden Black!


I feel like the only game that could come close to the same level of digital crack is Football Manager. Since I’ve already plowed way too many hours into that one I’m steering clear of Factorio.


I’ve been playing a little bit of Wanted: Dead. Man, this is a weird fucking game to write about. I don’t even know how best to describe it. How about this: Wanted: Dead is a 3/10 but I “see the vision”. There is an alternate universe where this game is an absolute cult classic.
(EDIT: spoiler tagged to preserve real estate as I sort of vomited out a whole ass rant).
On paper, all the pieces - or at least the ideas of the pieces - are there. Melee combat designed by developers who worked on Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden 2. Parrying and gun parrying. Third person shooting, grenades, weapon upgrades. Some sick gun-fu finishing moves combining pistol and katana. Cyberpunk storyline of privatised law enforcement using prisoners Suicide Squad style, a conspiracy, and sentient androids. Minigames. Weird and quirky cast of characters. Randomly inserted clips of a custom tie-in anime (???).
This could have been a great game. It’s just… everything is just so fucking bad. The characters are weirdly written and unlikeable (or absolute dead-horse beaten clichés like the police captain). The main cast are supposed to be terrorist war criminals but act like goofy sitcom characters. The cutscenes are actually made with some effort and care, they’re just horribly written and acted. Sometimes it’s managing to veer into B-movie “so bad it’s entertaining” territory but… most of the time it’s actually just bad.
And part of it is that the voice acting may be the absolute worst I’ve ever heard, and must have been recorded without direction too (and is poorly mixed, to boot). Like, I know I’m ranting here but it’s genuinely unbelievable that this voice acting shipped in a game that is sold for actual dollars. This isn’t just worse than AI voices, at times it’s so bad fucking Microsoft Sam would be an improvement. The protagonist is swiss for some reason, and her “actress” is constantly stumbling through the lines with all the grace of a 12-year-old reading their English exam off the page. And she’s one of the better acted characters! The other team members are even worse!
So, then, the gameplay? Well ultimately it’s kind of a worse version of Ninja Gaiden 2 but with cover based shooting injected into it like invasive plastic surgery. Was it really needed? Matter of taste, I suppose. The general flow is very similar: it’s about crowd control against hordes of enemies. Your main tool is melee and you can perform finishing blows on wounded enemies that give you generous amounts of iframes, only here you are way less mobile but instead you have guns. You don’t actually have enough ammo to dispatch all your enemies with them, though. They’re meant to be used selectively to take out key threats, while melee is the primary focus. So really, you just trade the mobility in NG2 for cover based shooting to achieve the same end result. Which is more fun? I prefer NG2 by a million country miles, but I suppose there is conceivably someone out there who just loves cover based shooting.
Another big issue is the skill tree and the difficulty curve. Way too many core abilities are gated behind unlocks, which makes the first level punishingly difficult. Especially since there is also a very old school “what is a checkpoint?” design philosophy here in terms of how rarely you get to save. Also, the bosses have been quite bad, which should come as no surprise to Ninja Gaiden fans. The first level boss especially was extremely frustrating and unpleasant to fight. Difficult yes, but not at all in a fun way.
So, is anything actually somewhat good? Well, the core combat - despite everything - is kind of alright once you unlock some skills. The gun-and-katana finishing moves themselves do look cool and are actually extremely varied - it’s just a shame that they’re really shoddily integrated into the movement and you “snap/slide” into them in a very jarring fashion. And you feel laggy and unresponsive coming out of them afterwards. Some of them also take way too long, which further adds to the weird feel of losing control of your character for several seconds. Meanwhile, NG2 finishing moves feel absolutely seamless. Overall that’s the case for all of the combat in Wanted: Dead - it’s clunky, it’s rigid, it’s not fluid. The moveset is also way less varied here, so you’ll be using the same combos over and over.
Then there are the minigames which… I don’t know man. There is a claw game you have to grind for skill points and there are two versions of the same rhythm game - one for karaoke and one for eating ramen (???). Maybe there will be more down the line. They’re okay if you love rhythm games, I suppose. I will tell you it’s fucking weird when your terrorist war criminals sing 99 Luftballons on karaoke as part of the main story, though. And not abbreviated either - the whole fucking thing.
So yeah… It’s been an interesting experience so far. It’s been something to do when I’ve felt too mentally exhausted to play The Drifter, but it’s not exactly going to enter my permanent rotation after (if) I finish it.
Ah I see. I don’t think so, unfortunately. Something like that would definitely be useful, I guess as a browser extension? I wonder if something like that exists…