Games

Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon is amazing.

I love the atmosphere and music. It also has several quality of life improvements to standard game mechanics. Magic has a Light and Heavy cast which can do different things. For example, a heavy cast might summon a creature while a light cast tells your summons who to attack. When interacting with merchants, you can sell directly from your stash without having to carry it all around.

#gaming #games #TaintedGrail @games

I very much enjoyed Darkest Dungeon 1. I've done several playthroughs, and bought all the expansion packs.

Yesterday I bought Darkest Dungeon 2. I'd always kind of intended to buy it, but it hadn't reviewed great - so I wasn't in a hurry. But since it was on special, and I'd heard that updates had improved things etc, I figured that it was time.

Anyway, I bought it, and I'm a bit disappointed. I think the developers took a wrong turn in their stagecoach. I haven't played heaps, but I've played enough to put in a few dot points:

• Firstly, DD1 had a native linux port. DD2 does not. So that sucks. It's not really a big deal, but its an immediate disappointment.
• For the first hour or so of the game, there is a near constant stream of notifications and popups explaining how things work. And while it is nice to have fairly tougher documentations, it doesn't feel great when I'm just trying to play the game. Perhaps more gradual flow of new game mechanics with a show rather than tell introduction would be better.
• The user interface has heaps of little design problems, for example sometimes opening a menu seems to do nothing, because it opens behind something else that needs to be closed first.
• Most things can be done with the mouse, but apparently starting the stage coach cannot? That feels a bit weird.
• Many symbols and icons in the game have a less-than-obvious meaning. You can of need the mouse-over text to learn what they do. But often the symbols appear inside the mouse-over text of something else - and so you cannot mouse-over the symbols that are inside the mouse-over text to see what they do...
• From a style point of view, I think the game is ... too grand too fast. I feel like I'm not finding the right words for this. But I just think it's weird that there is a constant stream of full-screen declarations for new areas and enemies, and big grand battle zoom-ins and commentary etc. right from the start. There seems to be no way to ramp up the tension for the boss battles or anything because it is already at maximum right from the first ghoul or whatever. It ends up making things feel a bit flat.
• Regarding the game strategy and tactics... I probably shouldn't comment on this, because I haven't played enough to be sure - but sometimes I feel like there's just a bunch of random junk happening, with enemies pushing me around and setting me on fire or whatever - and that's all fine but it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference to what I do. So it feels like it's just a lot of light and noise and luck. -- That said, I'm very aware that often when reviewers say a game relies too much on luck, it's really just that the review is not good at the game and so they over-rely on luck to make up for their skill deficit (which they cannot see). I suspect that a lot of the possible counter-play and strategy gets 'unlocked' as you unlock more characters and abilities; but I'm not sure that's great design, since that would mean the early experience is a bit crap.
• I feel like the game is designed so that I cannot succeed at first, but it will get easier on each attempt because I unlock bonuses etc. And although this is similar to DD1, the feel of it is very different - and worse. Because in DD1 there was this sense that the town and the characters visiting the town formed a consistent and continuing world. We journey into the dungeon and bring back supplies which may be useful for the town. Whereas in DD2 it isn't really clear what it is that we're upgrading or how we're upgrading it. The characters seem to just die and respawn for no apparent reason, and we get awarded candles which make everyone stronger? I just don't think the feel of it is right at all.

So over all, while I appreciate that the developers wanted to make a new game rather than just rehash the original, I feel like their "new game" was basically to mash the original together with ideas lifted straight from Slay the Spire and/or Hades - and it just quite fit properly.

So I'm a bit disappointed.

I've been playing Slay the Spire 2 and I've been really enjoying it.

The new characters, Regent and Necrobinder, have really interesting play styles. Overall, it's proving to be a great sequel to an already great game.

#gaming #games #slaytheSpire @games

I'm completely speechless. This looks so terrible I thought it was a joke, but apparently Nvidia released these demos to impress people. DLSS 5 runs the entire game through an AI filter, making every character look like it's running through an ultra realistic beauty filter.

The photo above is used as the promo image for the official blog post by the way. It completely ignores artistic intent and makes Grace's face look "sexier" because apparently that's what realism looks like now.

I wouldn't be so baffled if this was some experimental setting they were testing, but they're advertising this as the next gen DLSS. As in, this is their image of what the future of gaming should be. A massive F U to every artist in the industry. Well done, Nvidia.

oldest videogame i genuinely appreciate is

1985 (arcadeboard) Gradius

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1998 (N64) Banjo'n'Kazooie

1999 (N64) Rayman 2, (PS1) Bloody Roar 2, (PC) Age of Empires 2

2000 (N64) Kirby 64,

2001

2002 (PC) WarCraft 3: RoC & tFT

2003

2004 (PS2) Need For Speed: Underground 2

2005 (PS2) SoulCalibur 3, Tekken 5

2006

2007 (PC) Assassin's Creed

2008

2009 (PS3) Demon's Souls

2010

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And thank you, Eric!

Git Repo.

https://www.gamedate.org/

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/DiscordAlternatives/p/1782665/searching-for-discord-alternative-with-multi-screenshare-feature

When gaming with friends, many times we'll share our screens simultaneously so we can help keep track of group members if we get split up.

Are there any discord alternatives with this feature?

Bonus points if it allows you to also toggle on/off the audio from the share separately from their microphone.

Tildes.

We created this bundle to raise funds for Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota in response to the Trump administration sending ICE agents to the Minneapolis area and the reckless murder of an innocent people by ICE agents. ILCM provides free immigration legal representation to low-income immigrants and refugees in Minnesota and North Dakota. They also work to educate the community about immigration matters and advocates for public policies which respect the universal human rights of immigrants. ILCM provides services based on capacity and has a generally high demand for services. The more we are able to fundraise, the more people they will be able to assist.

Unomelon, the developer of Minecraft-inspired sandbox game Allumeria, says a DMCA from Microsoft, evidently related to Minecraft, got the game removed from Steam.

"The Allumeria Steam page is currently down because Microsoft has filed a false DMCA claim on it," Unomelon said on Bluesky on Tuesday. "They sent an email earlier today claiming that this screenshot infringes on their copyright. I am taking a moment to figure out what my path is going forward, will update soon."

The screenshot in question (above) is a simple wide shot of a forest filled with birch trees, what look to be oak trees with green and autumnal leaves, and a few pumpkins and weeds checkering the grassy dirt. There are definitely some similarities to Minecraft; if you told me this was a screenshot of a Minecraft mod, I'd probably believe you, but that's true of many voxel-based games, including Hytale.

Direct link to the Bluesky post (Skylib)