Let's Talk About Games

I'll kick us off with a game I genuinely love, Virginia.

Virginia has this insanely smooth art and presentation style that I just can't get enough of. Each scene oozes style, and each filmic cut makes me think I'm playing through some stylish detective film.

The game has zero dialogue, so the entire plot hinges on the games ability to tell it's story through relatively limited animation and a brilliant use of both music and direction.

It bounced off for a lot of people, but for me it's one of my favourite entries in the 'walking sim' genre.

What about you, what games do you think deserve more love than they originally got?

So I'm currently playing through Hollow Knight, and two months ago I played through (and loved) Ori and the Blind Forest.

Two Metroidvanias inside two months. Okay I hear you ask, what of it?

Well, those are the first Metroidvanias (or 'Search Action games, for those in the know) that I've ever really played for longer than ten minutes. To say I bounce off those sorts of games would be an understatement.

So, as you've gotten older, have you noticed that your tastes in games has evolved in any meaningful way?

Not necessarily true to the rest of the video, but the fast travel in Spider-Man 2 is worthy of a video all its own.

A follow up to a previous post:

Eeek. Writer and narrative designer Rhianna Pratchett has kindled a little frail hope that we might one day play another brand new Discworld videogame, while responding to earlier comments from Perfect Entertainment co-founder Gregg Barnett about who exactly owns the intellectual property rights to Perfect's old Discworld adventure titles from the 90s.

Barnett made these comments during a lengthy interview with Time Extension about the creation of the 90s games. In between the anecdotes about collaborating with Terry Pratchett and getting cussed out by John Cleese, he dangled the carrot of a potential re-release, explaining that the key problem is that half the intellectual property rights for the games have now reverted to the British monarchy under UK law. To quote Night Watch, "two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it."

...

"Whenever something closes in the UK, intellectual property rights revert 50% to the original creator and 50% to the crown, which is King Charles. So that's the two owners of the games. So yes, there have been discussions and something may be happening down the track - a rerelease or a remaster. But it's obviously a complicated process when you're dealing with the crown."

...

"We only have rights to the characters, not the games themselves," Pratchett told PCGamer following Barnett's statements. "If we did have the rights, then this would be a whole lot easier. We're genuinely not sure who does own the rights because studios have been bought and sold over the years, along with IP.

"Last time we investigated this, they were thought to be with Sony, but that's never been fully confirmed," she continued. "We'd certainly love to see the old games rereleased. It's news to us if His Majesty owns 50% of the Discworld games. Who knows what might happen if that's really the case. Maybe he's a fan!"

In the same interview with Time Extension, Barnett broached the ambition of making a brand new Discworld game, but suggested that this would be impossible, again due to legal obstacles. "Unfortunately, before Terry passed away, him or his agent or somebody had signed off every property to either ITV or Prime or the BBC literally across the board," he said.

Pratchett says this is incorrect, however. "No one has signed off everything to anybody," she told PCG. "We still own the IP rights... The reason why Gregg got the rights to do the games was that he came with solid ideas which fitted the nature of Discworld. The simple reason that there's never been a fully fledged Discworld game since then is no one has come to us with the right ideas and the resources to actually make it happen."

I find many Japanese game titles (in English) cringy. Especially the excessive use of certain words like "re", "code" and "zero". This seems to have gotten worse in recent years.

I guess it is supposed to be cool or edgy for some people.

It's Monday morning, and that can only mean one thing. Yup, it's time to think on those troublesome life choices that ultimately led to your current life situation. Oh and I guess it's also time to tell us what you've been playing over the last seven days.

So to quote the merchant from Resident Evil 4...

What're ya ~~buyin~~' playing?

Two initially jump to mind for me.

Outer Wilds took me three attempts to get into, but when it did...wow. Its a game that I is definitely more than the sum of it's parts, and one that I'd argue is genuinely beautiful in it's story and how it tells that story.

That said, once you've worked out the games mystery; it's story, it's tricks, timing and logistics, I wonder how more pull the game would have.

Return of the Obra Dinn is a game that I spend a lot of my time thinking about. The music, the atmosphere and of course, the games moment to moment gameplay.

Those puzzles will likely (hopefully) melt from my mind at some point, but even then I fear that initial sense of excitement and intrigue will be lost.

As much as I plan on going back to it at some point, I'm not sure a game of it's nature is all that well suited to additional playthroughs unfortunately.

Despite everything you might read from gaming journos about corporate greed destroying the gaming industry I still think it's an amazing time to be into video games. I'm absolutely spoiled for choice with games to play and I think it's just down to not caring about online multiplayer or getting caught up in marketing hype.

You don't have to pay through the nose to buy a fancy machine to play half-finished blockbusters, there are decades of classics that you can still play. Borrow a friend's old console and play some old games-of-the-year, find some random classics on Humble Bundle or GOG, see what random freebies I've posted in !freegames@feddit.uk, stick an emulator on your phone or find one that runs in a web browser.

Example: I played Metroid Prime after seeing a Lemmy post talking about. I could either:

• Dig out a GameCube or buy a Wii on eBay for £5 and find a copy of the game at CEX if I fancy the retro experience
• Buy the remastered Switch version if I fancied splashing out
• Just pirate a ROM if I feel rebellious
• Dump my own ROM and play it on PrimeHack if I feel like tinkering

This is just one example of a great game that passed me by, there are thousands of others out there. We have a crazy amount of choice not only of what to play but how we choose to play it. The bittersweet part is that this could all change so enjoy it while you can!

I'm replaying SUPERHOT (again) and it's got such a great core mechanic that I can't believe we've not seen more developers use it, or build around it.

What game mechanics seemed like they'd be the next big thing but ....didn't?

So I've been pottering around the steam store taking a look at a few of these demos; I've even downloaded a few.

One of them was a demo for a game I've had wishlisted for a solid year now. Anyway, to cut the story short; I played the demo and absolutely hated it.

Which brings me to my question; how do you feel about demos in 2024. Do they still serve a purpose, or are they a relic of a bygone time?

I kinda feel like all the benefit goes to the consumer, which is great...as a consumer but I'm not sure how Devs are getting much out of it, short of a very small bump in their games interest levels...maybe?

In a recent interview with Time Extension, Gregg Barnett (the designer of the classic Discworld point-and-click adventures from the '90s) revealed that remasters of the games may finally be on the cards after years of confusion over who owns the rights.

The series of games based on Terry Pratchett's Discworld books was released between 1995-2000, and is comprised of Discworld, Discworld II: Missing Presumed...!?, and Discworld Noir. All three titles were originally published on PC and were also notably created with the input of Pratchett himself, who helped to edit the dialogue.

For years, it's been believed that the rights around the game were in a state of limbo due to most of the companies involved in their creation either being absorbed by a larger company or going out of business altogether. Still, though, we couldn't resist sneaking in a cheeky question to Barnett during our recent chat regarding a potential rerelease, and his answer sort of took us by surprise.

We asked Barnett whether any retro publishers had tried to contact him to try and pick up the trail of where the rights may be, and shortly after, he replied:

"Yeah! We are a little bit beyond that point. I don’t want to give you a scoop, but a Discworld re-release may happen. The original rights are complicated in the UK, but it turns out that 50% reverted to me as the creator because the company Perfect Entertainment had been closed for over 10 years."

"Whenever something closes in the UK, intellectual property rights revert 50% to the original creator and 50% to the crown, which is King Charles. So that’s the two owners of the games. So yes, there have been discussions and something may be happening down the track – a rerelease or a remaster. But it’s obviously a complicated process when you’re dealing with the crown."

Morning all. It's Monday morning and that can only mean one thing....

What have you been playing this week?

I'm 6-7. I'm at my grandparents house. He's got one of those old-timey Pong consoles that you plug into the TV; it had like 5-6 different 'sport' modes (Tennis, Squash etc etc), but ultimately it was still a few pixels moving up and down or maybe left and right.

And it was amazing.

What's your earliest gaming memory?

I like a good list, and 2023 left me with loads to chew over. Ultimately I decided on this as my favourite five:

1. Lies of P
2. Spider-Man 2
3. Dredge
4. Storyteller
5. Metroid Prime Remastered

Four faces. From any era, console or genre. Which characters 'define' Videogames to you?

Morning folks. It's time for another roundup of what you've been playing across the last seven days.

Lets-a-goooo!

It's not even close for me.

Isshin, the Sword Saint - Sekiro

This guy gave me fits for a solid 6 weeks. Firstly, he's got a troubling first part where you have to fight... something else. That fight isn't difficult, but if you're not paying attention it can take off vital health points.

Once you've got through that first stage the fight truly begins. And this is where I really struggled. I'm thinking I had 80+ attempts at the guy before...I sort of just did it.

And without wishing to make it sound like I had a cheesy moment like in a sports movie where it just clicked....it definitely just clicked.

There was a bit of commotion on the street, and my partner was running in and out telling me about it..but I'm totally zoned in. Before I know what is happening I've got the guy down to maybe 10% of his health and then the pressure hits you....

Thankfully I used my knowledge of these games to back off and play smart (I've been burnt by trying to rush in many a time before), caught his parry attacks and got the job done...

Not without almost missing the final execution prompt of course.

What about you? Who's the toughest boss you've ever faced?

Super niche question I know, but here we are.

I've had a long held opinion that....

Battlefield: Bad Company is a significantly better game than it's larger, more popular and more multiplayer focused sequel.

Now don't get me wrong, BC2 is a fine entry into the series, but with its growth into a more online focused space, it lost an awful lot of what made that first game so special; namely the fantastic story and unique campaign built around four loveable rogues.

I think Bad Company 2 has a campaign, but it's not nearly as memorable as the OG campaign. And whilst the push for multiplayer obviously made sense from a financial perspective, it turned the series back into just another entry into the wider BF universe.

What about you?

I'm aging myself here.

The first game I really played (aside from my granddads super old Pong console) was Sonic the Hedgehog on my Sega Master System II.

Don't remember much of it, but I know this: I never played a Sonic game since. I guess it just wasn't for me.

What about you?

I spend far too much time watching people talk about games on youtube. I'll go first and fire off a few of my absolute favourites.

GMTK

Game Makers Toolkit is probably one of the most well known gaming youtubers. He's produced over 200 really well done mini-documentaries that focus on everything from Mario's Jump to how accessible games from 20XX were.

He's also in the process of making his own videogame, and is journaling that adventure through his own videos.

Jacob Geller

I believe Jacob is working over at MinMaxx right now, but he still finds time to put out some....very interesting content. Not all of it is videogame related, but the majority of it is, and most of that content is very unique and highly interested in talking about games in ways that I've never seen them spoken about before.

People Make Games

They're a relatively new kid on the block, but being a slightly larger team they're able to take on larger projects, such as how and why the videogame industry is failing the working class, how Valve's production line isn't as magic as you might believe or...why the Queen had a golden Wii.

New Frame Plus

Think GMTK but with a focus on the visuals of the medium. Some of my favourite content is his yearly round up of his favourite in-game animations, or the 2+ hour breakdown he did of the Sonic franchise's inability to keep to a standard. Heck, I got the family into that one.

Good Afternoon folks. It's time for our first weekly 'What I'm Playing' thread.

We'll keep this simply: What games have been occupying your time over the last seven days?