Computerchairgeneral

Ridiculous, but depressingly unsurprising.

Well, the leopards are eating good again.

Kind of surprised it took this long to be honest. Also a little surprised it’s a patent lawsuit, but then again it might be easier to prove infringement on a gameplay concept you have patented rather than copyright.

Been bouncing between Wizordum and Void Stranger over the last few days. Wizordum is a fun “boomer shooter” that takes a lot of inspiration from games like Hexen and I’ve been enjoying mowing down monsters with fireballs and a magical shotgun. Void Stranger I’m still not sure how I feel about. Heard it mentioned a few times as a very meta game with a lot of layers. In theory I like games like that. Figuring out the core puzzle gameplay of moving blocks around has been fun, even if I don’t consider myself that great at puzzles, but the meta stuff is riding that fine line between being just cryptic enough to be intriguing to being so cryptic that I’m not sure how I’m supposed to figure this out without a guide.

Glad to see the campaign still going strong. Almost being past the minimum threshold requirement for seven countries is impressive. Hopefully it can reach one million signatures, even if I’m a little skeptical about the EU taking this seriously and passing a decent law. Still, anything that keeps the topic on peoples minds is a good thing.

Two weeks? That’s got to be a record for the shortest amount of time it took for a live service game to completely crash and burn.

“We have looked at these difficult economic times and decided to make them more difficult for our employees by firing them all.” Nice. Always a great move. Also, I don’t see how they can say with a straight face that none of their ongoing projects or releases are going to be impacted by laying off the entire team. Even if they are just a publisher firing everyone and “restructuring” the company is going to have some kind of impact.

So, has Embracer officially surpassed EA’s killstreak of video game studio closures yet? They’ve got to be getting close.

I remember reading about this mod years ago when it was still in early development, can’t believe it actually has a release date. It’s always nice to see one of these huge Skyrim mod projects actually make it to release.

I’ve been working my way through the Baldur’s Gate series after putting about ninety hours in BG3. BG1 was fun even if the story was a bit predictable and generic, although it did feel like playing through a DnD campaign. Really enjoyed Shadows of Amn, but Throne of Bhaal just turned into a slog at the end. I think the most interesting part of playing through the trilogy was watching Bioware’s style develop over the course of the three games. As someone who was introduced to Bioware through Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire I’ve always thought Bioware’s character writing stood out, especially in the old days, so it was a bit jarring to play through BG1 where the companions feel more like hirelings you pick up for their class rather than full-fledged characters. BG2 felt more like a classic Bioware game with banter, romance, and companion quests, although the Real Time advancement system kept glitching out on me. I was hoping to move on to Planescape: Torment after TOB, but I’m feeling burnt out on Infinity Engine games. So right now I’m trying to find something in the Summer Sale to serve as a palate cleanser.

Yeah, it would be great if Kojima was still working on Metal Gear, wouldn’t it Konami? I wonder why he isn’t?

Given what the modding community has been able to come up with without official tools, I’m looking forward to the mods that are going to come out after the next patch.

This feels like a trailer for a live-service Dragon Age spinoff, rather than the next main Dragon Age game.

Glad to see the Stop Killing Games initiative continuing even if the most likely response from the UK government is going to be “No”.

Accidents happen. Your finger slips and suddenly your game is full of Nazi symbols. Happens all the time. Also, I get the gist of Garriss’s response, but mentioning that he had men and women at his house and his mother was always present just makes things sound weirder than a simple denial. Sounds like a horrible situation all around.

I’m impressed at how well thought out this battle plan is. I’m usually pessimistic when it comes to governments taking pro-consumer stances, but then again all it takes is one government siding against game companies to set a precedent. Hopefully this picks up steam and gets to a wider audience. It feels like one of the few things gamers can agree on these days is how much they hate business practices like this.

I have an unhealthy cycle of this with Hearts of Iron IV a WW2 grand strategy game. I’ll realize the embarrassing number of hours that I’ve put into the game and then I’ll stop playing for a while. But then one of the big mods for it will update and then I dive back in and lose a weekend and then the process repeats.

The other game I consistently come back to is Threads of Fate or Dewprism it’s a PS1 action-RPG with dual protagonists where each one has their own campaign or story to play through. I guess it’s nostalgia that keeps me coming back to it, but it really wasn’t a favorite game growing up and I didn’t beat it until years after I’d gotten it. But every few years I’ll just remember it out of the blue and get the urge to play through it again.

Yeah, besides the PSSR feature, I’m struggling to see the point in upgrading to this if you already have a PS5. It feels like Sony and Microsoft are just going with plans they made at the start of the generation when they assumed they would need a mid-gen refresh. But with the massive shortages it doesn’t really feel like we’re at the kind of midpoint that calls for a console refresh.

So, did that whole “late discovery” thing just not happen with Cyberpunk? Because I just have a hard time imagining CDPR looking at the state that game launched in and thinking that they’d made a game that was basically perfect. I mean, at least they learned in time for Phantom Liberty’s release, I guess.

At least they’re being upfront. And given their stated desire to move on from BG3, it makes sense that they want to put out something simpler but workable instead of something complicated that might need long-term support.