Chozo

This is my hole! It was made for me!

I’ve been getting back into playing The Finals lately. Kinda similar to Splitgate, in that the mechanics are easy to understand and mastering them will yield you a lot of fun and victory. The movement is very snappy, there’s a lot of variety in how you can play, and matches are relatively quick.

It’s an objective-based shooter, so you won’t win just by getting kills; you have to complete a specific goal before your enemies to actually win. So it’s a bit like Overwatch or TF2 in that regard (kinda dated references, I know) in terms of goals and a player’s abilities. And the gunplay feels very much like Battlefield, which would make sense because ex-DICE devs worked on this game, I believe. It’s also got crossplay.

It’s got a seasonal/live service model for cosmetics. The battle pass and any other MTX are all only for cosmetics, though; unlocking weapons/abilities can only be done through gameplay, with no skip mechanics. So no weapons, abilities, maps, game modes, etc can be bought with real money at all. Figured I’d mention, since I know that’s a turnoff for a lot of people, but I’ve been enjoying it as a free player.

I miss the arcade-y feel of older racing games. Everything these days tries too hard to be a simulator, that they end up stripping the fun out of it. I want sparks to fly out of my tires when I drift even though they’re rubber and wouldn’t actually do that, I want wacky announcers with color commentary, I don’t want to shift gears.

I want games like Ridge Racer and Need for Speed to make a comeback.

It reminds me of that bacon-flavored soda that was popular for a couple weeks until everybody tried it and was like “Yep, that’s what drinking bacon is like” and never bought a second bottle.

I would definitely classify The Finals as a live service. The way I see it, any game that is designed to be “never-ending”, and have a constant stream of new content (free or paid) would fall under this category of game.

I wouldn’t say it’s a requirement for all live service games, but I’d also say that anything that uses “seasonal” content models would also be considered a live service.

King RAMEsseeeeeeeeeeeeeeees~

SO HERE I AM

Mbin is a fork of Kbin. A lot of users have moved from Kbin instances to Mbin, as the Kbin dev has had some personal life issues that have interfered with his ability to reliably work on the project.

Yeah, the chipsets used make a lot more difference in battery life than the actual physical capacity of the battery, itself. A well-optimized device can make excellent use out of a small battery. Not to mention any number of apps that could run amok in the background and have major impacts on your battery life.

Welcome to the 0.01%.

Aside from the battery, 99.99% of people don’t care about any of those features in the first place. Even among Android users, each of those are incredibly niche.

ZZZ is a master class in video game animation. It’s one of the most stylistic games I’ve played in years.

Honestly, it’s pretty far into the PS5’s lifecycle at this point. I think a PS5 Pro this late into the current generation would be a bad move, because a PS6 is undoubtedly around the corner in just a few years and will effectively obsolesce a PS5 Pro, anyway.

If they released a Pro version last year, that’d make more sense. But unless Sony’s expecting this generation to stretch out longer than normal, this just doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Yeah, that lawsuit from last week is also why I started pirating 20 years ago.

I’m not convinced this game’s development cycle wasn’t all just a giant money laundering operation. There’s no way they could spend that much time and that much money only to put out something so universally panned, and not be intentional. All those millions of dollars, and they never hired a single consultant that looked at the project and said “Literally nobody wants this”? I don’t believe it.

I long for a moneyless, classless game in this genre where the incentives are community thriving, trust, pleasure, and all the other aspects that make life worth worth living outside of capitalism.

I think Sim Ant technically meets these conditions.

The original Kbin dev is Polish, so English is likely a second language for him. Also, it’s still very early in development, so a lot of terminology put in use are likely placeholders until something more natural-sounding could be finalized.

It depends on who you ask. Some will say that it’s an uninspired game with outdated and recycled mechanics that nobody wanted in 2024. Others have a much weirder take, and blame the game’s failure on it being “woke”.

I think the real issue is that people are just tired of hero shooters, and Concord brought nothing new to the table for the genre.

Don’t be silly, Capcom would never make a new version of Resident Evil 4.

I need to finish it some day! It does such a great job of capturing the feeling of starting a new adventure. It’s one of the few games where I don’t feel the need to look up a guide when I get stuck, because the game makes me want to learn how to progress through each area. An absolute masterclass in game design, IMO.