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Cake day: September 3rd, 2023

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  • brsrklf@jlai.lutoComic StripsNever Give Up
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    7 hours ago

    Even non-cartoony, somewhat serious games do it.

    Horizon Zero Dawn does it. Even has a few spots where you’re supposed to jump semi-blindly into dark pits because you can vaguely see a body of water deep down.

    Even ignoring the fact that anyone but a olympic-level diver would just crash against the surface and die horribly, has Aloy considered that for all she knows it could be a 10cm deep puddle?


  • Close, I count 8.

    spoiler

    _ twice on Zebes, a third time if you count the weird mecha in Zero Mission

    _ once on SR388 (Samus Returns version, because Ridley missing in Metroid 2 was clearly a mistake to be fixed retroactively)

    _ twice in the Prime series, Meta and Omega

    _ one infamous PTSD-inducing battle in fucking Other M

    _ a X clone in Fusion




  • I did not read the full article, but the first advice is what I did, and I don’t regret it. I’ve been working in a public institution’s dev department for 3 years, after a dozen working as a contractor for big companies. It pays a fraction of what I could get elsewhere, but I got benefits I value way more than that.

    A lot less stress, concrete work on services that have immediate and beneficial impact on people, colleagues that don’t consider everyone else is competition, and somewhat flexible hours with generous annual leave.

    I am not sure that kind of job is available everywhere, so I got “lucky” I found this, I guess. But it’s not like I had to fight for it either. Our team had vacant positions for years because nobody was replying to the job offers. And I just had my contract renewed. I was the only candidate.


  • “Tradition”. La corrida en France, c’est arrivé en 1853, juste pour faire plaisir à la meuf de Napoléon III. On parle pas d’un truc ancré dans la culture locale, malgré ce que certains voudraient faire croire.

    Ça me fait presque penser aux baleiniers japonais. La chasse industrielle date de la fin du XIXe, presque plus personne n’y est favorable à part l’infime minorité qui la pratique, mais ils ont des potes aux bons endroits, donc ils maquillent ça en “recherche scientifique” et ils continuent. Même pas d’intérêt financier, plus personne ne bouffe de baleine.




  • He’s not supposed to be still there. He is, but we can’t know that until TotK, and blood moons had stopped until he was reawakened.

    If you just take BotW as a whole, you’ve saved the world.

    I hated how original Xenoblade X (I haven’t finished the switch remake yet, so not sure about it) had a “fake ending” that didn’t solve anything, and didn’t even explain why shit was still going on, just so the game could continue indefinitely.


  • It’s not limited to those two, it’s very common, generally the norm, not having a postgame state when the stakes are too high. You’ve got two choices :

    • let the player come back to it after you beat the big bad, so you have to create new interactions to try and reflect that, and not change the world significantly so all the stuff that’s left to do is still available and makes sense. It often feels like saving the world achieved nothing.

    • show in the ending that the player actually achieved something big, to the point coming back after it would not be the same game, basically.

    How would you explain returning to BotW after killing the source of all shit and still having hostile guardians and blood moons resurrecting monsters?


  • It’s not a very notable thing, and we don’t see who the hands belong to, but it just seems like what they went for IMO.

    Cadence of Hyrule is pretty good, more forgiving and more of a connected map with item-based puzzles compared to Crypt of the Necrodancer. The map is reordered between games, but it’s mostly designed rather than fully procedural. It’s fun.

    It borrows heavily from a Link to the Past visually, but has references to many episodes. You’ve got enemies from Breath of the Wild, Gerudo, Goron, even a full Majora’s Mask inspired DLC.



  • I am more familiar with Forza Horizon, which is my own comparison point, but, yeah. It’s like they missed why those were fun.

    Also, those button missions. They’re slow to set up, they interrupt the flow of driving, they’re mostly easy enough you can still beat them while messing up completely and they don’t incentivize breaking records.

    Compare that to speed traps and danger signs in Horizon. You see them, you speed through them, you do stupid shit. No pause, no slow as hell camera move showing you the obvious thing you’re supposed to do. It’s all organic.


  • Regarding Order of Ecclesia, it’s even less connected than Portrait of Ruin, which at least has a central hub. Only the very last part opens up a bit but it’s not a big area. The rest is almost completely linear and made of separate, small levels, featuring a bit of backtracking for specific quests. Calling it a metroidvania is almost a stretch at this point.

    It is pretty good though and I liked it a lot. It almost feels like the missing link between classicvanias and metroidvanias, especially in hard mode.


  • Until then it wasn’t a thing, but 8 is a precedent for new DLC tracks. The original had a great DLC with 4 extra cups of new circuits. Those are included in the Switch version. There is also the later pass that is made of recycled Mario Kart Tour content, but except maybe a couple, those are rather forgettable and disappointing.

    I am really not sure whether we can expect new tracks in World though. If they want them to work the same as the rest of the game, it would basically mean also designing a new landmass around them. It’s not impossible, but I assume it must be a lot of work.