Druckmanization 2024

…of the video game industry.

Druckmanization – a crucial point in time where everyone realizes that everything is broken and unsustainable; just how bad things really are and followed by uprisings and revolutions.
EXAMPLE: The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 was a total druckmanization of the Czarist Russia and its Navy.

Here is where I’m going to continue my analysis of vydia trailers as a continuation of “You Can’t Spell Death Without EA”

11.01.2024

Let’s start with The Finals: the number of players went from 203k on December 13, 2023 to 71k as of Jan 11, 2024.
Digital Foundry released their tech analysis and it’s basically just slightly improved Bad Company from 2008. 15+ years and no improvement.

• Heavy parts of the building just jerk awkwardly when falling. The only thing they added is more parts that can be destroyed. Pre-defined destruction animations is better
• Total destruction system was in Red Faction Guerilla
• Fire system was in Far Cry 2
• Smaller parts simply disappear. HL2 did it better 20 years ago. Also Crysis
• Ability to destroy light sources was in Splinter Cell, F.E.A.R., STALKER and what not. Not original
• RTXGI. If you go to the NVIDIA page they still show screenshots from Unreal 4 which makes this tech at least several years old. This particular tech doesn’t even matter. The Division was the first game that truly introduced GI capabilities and I see no difference between that and this
• It still has all the visual problems like improper lighting, light leaks, screen space reflections and so on.

And I don’t care about your whining that “it’s an MP game. Cutbacks had to be made”
No! None of my problem. They had to think about it when they were designing the game

This game was presented to me as a technological marvel. I only see Captain Marvel. I don’t see anything that was impossible to accomplish in 2015 or even 2005. Crysis 3 still looks great overall, F.E.A.R still looks awesome in action. You can’t kill anybody with a toilet. HL2:MP was a blast.
Where is the fun?

Verdict: dead on arrival

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12.01.2024

Dragon’s Dogma II.
Didn’t play the first one. Know nothing about the franchise. Heard the first one was a cult classic but not profitable.
Will they pull it off this time and turn it into another Soulsborne?

Dragon’s Dogma 2 – Gameplay Showcase | TGS 2023

• They show a bit of gameplay in the first 45 seconds and I already see potential
• You can grab enemies and use them as a transport. You can climb on them. Enemies are not just “enemies you ought to kill” but also objects you can interact with in many other ways. Other than Shadow of The Colossus and maybe that 3D Castlevania game I can’t remember any other game where you have this opportunity. I dig it
• They not only talk but show gameplay at the same time. YOU HEAR THAT TODD?! YOU FUCK!!
• Each class feels unique. Their attacks are satisfying to look at
• 4:07 – you can use the environment to your advantage
• Huge monsters as bridges? Dig it.
• Visually a bit washed out. This is what I can do in Unreal at the moment and I’ve been learning it for only 2+ weeks at this moment.
• 6:05 – enemies grab on to walls. I haven’t seen this level of monster/environment interaction since RAGE
• Night is actually dark as fuck. That’s STALKER vibes
• Each class and multi-class has their own unique sets of animations. Really nice

This is a successful cult classic contender. I dig everything they’ve shown me.
But they’ll always find a way to fuck everything up. What am I missing?

Dragon’s Dogma 2: Trickster Vocation Breakdown – IGN First

• Interesting strategies. You can manipulate AI to your advantage. You can even throw them off the ledge! That’s hilarious

Dragon’s Dogma 2 – Main Trailer | PS5 Games

• Don’t care about the story. Japan can rarely tell them especially in somewhat western medieval setting.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 – 18 Minutes of Fighter, Thief, Warrior, and Sorcerer Gameplay – IGN First

• Combat is satisfying. Not too spongy and enemies can deal enough damage for you to start thinking what to do next
• They actually show stuff from the trailers. Same stuff but in different formats. That’s a legit marketing strategy
• Enemies require you to use actual strategies
• 4:40 – and then they show that ogre again. Why? Makes me worry about the game’s enemy variety
• Enemies have plenty of attack animations. Not Dark Souls but plenty
• 9:44 – while huge bosses do have plenty of health they don’t seem particularly demanding. Definitely not Dark Souls but you do have to move a lot
• 17:14 – I was slightly wrong. Long sword guys can withstand a lot of damage but mages are fucked
• What is missing is spells and skills to solve puzzles, especially environmental ones. Whatever you have, you have to use it for combat, movement, puzzle, interaction, and narrative.
  So far I’ve only seen a lot of combat, some movement (levitation), and interaction (blow up a dam to kill an ogre)

Dragon’s Dogma 2: Get to Know the Sphinx – IGN First

• So they are going to have riddles
• What I like about japanese devs is that they simply talk while we watch the gameplay footage
• The beauty of Open World games is that you can miss a lot of content makign each playthrough unique

Dragon’s Dogma 2 Showcase 2023

• Huge colossi
• I want to see their quest system. How complex these quests are?
• 10:00 – DO NOT PREORDER!
• Level Design feels empty. Not a lot of side-content
• BTW I haven’t seen players using enemies as transportation during gameplay. Feels like they lied to us. That functionality is rare as fuck. Mostly for presentation purposes. Same with the dam explosion
• The game is far from being another Witcher 3
• Enemy variety is lacking.
• The world really feels empty
• Not a lot of activities besides walking and killing
• Boss battles don’t have any narrative behind them
• 52:40 – so, we cannot swim? Bullshit

I’ve seen enough.

• Not enough enemy variety. Worse than Soulsborne
• Enemy attack patterns are no Soulsborne
• Strategy. Worse than Soulsborne (yes this game is specifically trying to copy from From)
• Environment and enemy animations and interactions are created for presentation purposes only. There won’t be a lot of it
• No interesting lore like in Witcher 3 or Elden Ring
• Not enough side activities
• Preorder bullshit
• Quests are gonna suck ass just like in every Japanese RPG ever
• I doubt people gonna use quirky classes. Only mages and warriors
• No interesting level design like in Elden Ring. No memorable locations or visuals.
• I don’t see any interesting and truly faith based builts. Worse than Elden Ring
• RPG system? Dunno
• Item system? Dunno
• Buffs and Debuffs? Basic bitch. Worse than in Elden Ring or Witcher 3
• Movement is boring. Worse than Tears of The Kingdom or Ass Creed
• Didn’t see any puzzles.
• Camera movements are from PS3 era
• Cutscenes. Basic bitch
• Climbing enemies hasn’t changed since the first game
• The only thing to be excited about is combat but would it be enough for dozens of hours?
• No interesting NPCs
• No interesting interactions with the environment. Breaking boxes in Dark Souls was fun.
• No interesting situations like that horror tower in Bloodborne
• I don’t see any meaningful choices
• Collectibles are basic bitch. Worse than BoTW

Verdict: still stays niche. This time it might make more money because there is some amount of hype and recognition but no BGIII numbers. Quite frankly I don’t see any improvements on the formula so the only hope is brand recognition BUT I had to re-check that it’s Capcom + people already have FF16 and that game flopped HARD. It won’t break out

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Bloodlines 2

Let’s also look at Bloodlines 2. Obviously it’s gonna be a disaster. The original team is gone. The original material is gone. The Chinese Room are reusing assets to finish something.
Let’s see how bad it is.

Bloodlines 2 – Dev Diary Recap #1

• 0:39 – “he/him”, “he/they”
• “Strong expertise in storytelling.” Go fuck yourself. I had to watch several YouTube videos in order to understand The Machine for Pigs. Shut your theyhole
• The elder’s name if Fire/Fyre/Phyre. Jesus.
• They show jack shit. Just some concept art
• Why aren’t they talking about what happened to the OG team and why Paradox decided to reboot the project?
• They talk about lighting. IT’S AN RPG! Nobody fucking cares about light.

Bloodlines 2 – Dev Diary Recap #2

• It’s supposed to be a trucking RPG. Why can’t we choose sex?
• Not gonna listen to their bullshit
• 13:13 – skin looks terrible
• No gameplay whatsoever.

Verdict: sucks ass

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2024 disappointments and cancellations

Black Myth, Stellar Blade and DokeV. Also Senua, etc
I doubt these games exist.
SB and DV showed no gameplay.
Black Myth is created by some unknown fucks and I don’t remember any Chinese game that looks anything like that. I don’t know ANY game whatsoever that looks that good and has such a wide variety of movements and effects. Also barely any gameplay. I expect Crowbcat to have a field day with that one IF it won’t be cancelled.
Update: the very next day I discovered this video by JorRaptor. The game seems to actually exist so what kind of problems we might encounter?

• Hit Detection. That’s a bitch. Nier Automata devs showed their hit detection system and it was VERY complex and complicated. You need From or Platinum to pull it off
• Performance. The game looks like it only would be able to run on RTX40xx series. I doubt they even think about optimizations. The game just looks like they took Cinematic Quality level assets from Quixel and put them into the game
• Speaking of Quixel. People would find a lot of assets from there. Calling it
• Story. It’s a problem all across the industry. Nobody can write no more. I doubt they even have a story. More like a couple of cutscenes and text notes. We’d just run from one boss fight to the next and that’s it
• Moment to moment gameplay. I don’t expect interesting level design, art direction (apart from monster designs), any puzzles, or anything that’s not related to boss fights
• Cut content. They showed Monkey turning into a bug in one of the first trailers. Haven’t seen it in a while. What else is cut?

Senua – doesn’t exist. Huge “huh?” and “meh” if it’s real
Stalker 2 – just look at screenshots and Tood’s and Feil’s reaction when they played it
Ubisoft’s SW – just look at Avatar. Same but even worse
Awoed by Obsickoftheirshit – I’m sick of their shit. They told everyone that BGIII is an anomaly and that we shouldn’t expect anything close to that in terms of quality and spectacle even though Obsidian was a much more established studio a decade ago. They shat their pants. They can die now. I want them to fail spectacularly. They deserve every bit of venom comin’ their way. Role Playing Govnukes

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13.01.2024

My Name is Cassandra and you WILL listen to me this time

Let’s see how well my system works by analyzing already released games

1. Battlefield 2042 – the one that started it all.
   • Overall Reviews: Mixed(187,062 reviews)
   • Recent Reviews: Mixed(3,954 reviews)
   • First review I saw was: “I’d rather buy WinRAR.” by Ned Kelly
   • Around 20k people playing
   • BV – 52k top
   • B1 – 18k
   • B4 – 2K (all data is taken from https://steamcharts.com. I take top results)
2. KOTOR remake – dead
3. Arkane’s Redfall – disaster
   • Overall Reviews: Mostly Negative(2,023 reviews)
   • Recent Reviews: Mixed(107 reviews)
   • Redfall’s Development Was Reportedly So Troubled That Devs Hoped Microsoft Would Cancel It
4. The Invincible
   • even IGN didn’t fall for it. 5 – Mediocre
   • but Steam reviews are positive
   • only 52 people play right now
   • 1,237 all-time peak 2 months ago
5. Dream Cycle by the Lara Croft’s dev
   • Apparently got released
   • Overall Reviews: Mixed (220 reviews)
   • 64 all-time peak 2 years ago
6. Dead Space Remake. That one is an exception it seems. No idea why. I disagree but I’m glad someone enjoyed their time after giving EA their hard earned money. Whatever
   • 30,925 all-time peak 12 months ago
   • Overall Reviews: Very Positive(30,495 reviews)
   • Recent Reviews: Very Positive(1,509 reviews)
7. Back 4 Blood
   •    2,290 players right now. 65,987 all-time peak 2 years ago
   • L4D – 31,732 players right now. 162,399 all-time peak 10 years ago. Nuff said.
8. Overwatch 2
   • Overall Reviews: Overwhelmingly Negative(233,618 reviews)
   • Recent Reviews: Mostly Negative(8,005 reviews)
   • yet 21,913 players right now. Drugs are bad, m’kay?
9. Saints Row reboot. The studio that made that game no longer exists
10. Gotham Knights.
    • 326 players right now
    • 24,138 all-time peak 15 months ago
    • Overall Reviews: Mixed(12,357 reviews)
    • Recent Reviews: Mixed(422 reviews)
11. Jedi Survivor vs Fallen Order
    • FO = 46,550 all-time peak 4 years ago.
      Both Overall Reviews and Recent Reviews are Very Positive
    • JS = 67,855 all-time peak 9 months ago.
      • Overall Reviews: Mixed(41,548 reviews)
      • Recent Reviews: Mostly Positive(2,654 reviews)
    • JS is not a terrible game with a terrible optimization
12. FF16 – Square Enix’s ‘Final Fantasy XVI’ Sales Lead To Stock Price, Profit Decline
13. Amnesia The Bunker
    • Dark Descend – 5,666 all-time peak 8 years ago. 39 in-game right now
    • Machine for Pigs –7,249 all-time peak 11 years ago (WUT?)
    • Rebirth – 6,486 all-time peak 3 years ago
    • Bunker – 2,423 all-time peak 7 months ago. 40 in-game right now
14. Starfield
    • Overall Reviews: Mixed(91,507 reviews)
    • Recent Reviews: Mostly Negative(7,425 reviews) (28% of positive reviews)
    • SF – 7,207 players right now vs Skyrim’s (I only use special edition) – 15,958 players right now
    • If you look at the overall chart, SF started high and now it keeps falling. Skyrim, on the other hand, slowly keeps rising
    • Skyrim (OG not SE) – 287,411 all-time peak 12 years ago
    • Starfield – 330,723 all-time peak 4 months ago
    • Fallout 4 – 472,962 all-time peak 8 years ago
    • More people play F4 (12,760 players right now vs 7,207 players right now)
15. Callisto Protocol – Glen Schofield left his own studio
16. Lies of P. The first Soulsborne to actually get close
    • Both recent and overall are very positive
    • LoP vs Dark Souls Remastered
      • 2,292 players right now vs 1,887 players right now
      • 19,618 all-time peak 4 months ago vs 24,501 all-time peak 6 years ago

Out of 16 games only 3 definitely succeed (Dead Space, Jedi Survivor and Lies of P). I was right in 13 cases. The system works. And it’s good to be skeptical in general in this particular day and age. Don’t get excited. These people want you dead. You have to kill them first and bathe in their blood.
However, “succeeded” is a debatable term. We don’t know the sales numbers for sure. Starfield made money and Todd The Lyin’ One won’t lose his job. We still have a long road ahead of us.

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19.01.2024

Indiana Jones and the Great Cock Ring

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle – Official Gameplay Trailer (4K) | Xbox Dev Direct 2024

• Graphics suck. Looks like CGI from PS3/X360 launch era. Think Motorstorm or Dirty Harry
• 0:35 – Indy looks like shit. Obviously he was beaten by nazis and all but I’m talking about the visuals. Uncharted 4 had better visuals
• Also how could he punch that nazi? You wouldn’t be able to reach him from his position
• First mistake: Todd Howard. Second mistake: Executive Producer. We all know that Futurama joke about executive producers. What exactly is he doing? Todd is abandoned brand
• First person – interesting take. But now it reminds me of walking simulators like Invincible and Firewatch. Will they go Mirror’s Edge route? Didn’t see that. Wolfenstein? Indy is not about that. Riddick? Can they pull this off? Talos Principle? Too indie. Whatever it is, it’s gonna look visibly cheap and out of place considered that MG are action devs and not puzzle inventors.
• Troy Baker is not even trying anymore. He’s just using his own voice. I hate that pretty face like you wouldn’t believe. His face screams “I made bad investment choices and now I need another huge hit” and “I care a lot about my image but this image is fake”
• 1:36 – Wilhelm Scream. When in doubt – it’s a sin
• I have certain amount of trust in Machine Games and it did remind me of Riddick a bit. But it’s day one on Gamepiss (gottem!)
• 2:27 – cannibalized from Wolfenstein
• Levels feel really small
• Wait a sec *Googles who made Youngblood* yep, still Machine Games. Wolf II was already rather debatable.
• Animations will become stale and boring faster than you can say “Polo”
• This game reminds me of Amnesia Rebirth! Same aesthetics and colors. At least that game was made for $20 or something.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle – Game Overview | Xbox Dev Direct 2024

• The presentation is slick and well rehearsed. I don’t trust like that
• Concept arts and not a lot of gameplay
• Lots of “colorful” people. Look at us! We’re so special!

No hope for this one. Washed out

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Avowed

Avowed Deep Dive – Xbox Developer_Direct

• Do we really care about other RPGs after Baldur’s Gate 3? It’s gonna take some time for other devs to catch up and up the ante. Besides Obsidian were the ones who told us not to expect anything close to BG3
• Instead of showing the goods they show their studio and rewards.
• Feels like Arkane’s messiah of Might and Magic only without funny physics
• Obsidian is known for RPGs. Instead they showed combat. Hmmm…

Even more mediocre than Outer Worlds. Obsidian is a goner

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Hellblade

Still no extensive gameplay footage. Cool visuals (are they even real tho?). NO gameplay. Waporware.

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26.01.24

PoP The Lost Crown

$49.99
The user score is 9.2 on metacritic for some reason

Fortunately, “It is important to note that 300K players are unlikely to be equivalent to 300K sales. The title launched as part of Ubisoft’s subscription, so many of these figures may have come from those who subscribed to play the game at launch.”

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29.01.24

Palworld

I don’t care about the game and fuck Nintendo.
Some AAA devs seem to be butthurt real bad. Good. I now look at Palworld in a more positive light.
Back in “You Can’t Spell Death Without EA” I wrote how the devs probably bought a bunch of UE assets and blueprints and kitbashed them together. Seems to be the case to some degree. The devs talk how they had to learn everything from scratch on a $10k budget. Good for them.
If it makes corpos and Naughy Dog seethe – I now love Palworld. And it only costs $30? Count me in!
Nintendo can’t make a good Pokemon game while western devs are burning hundreds of millions of bucks on stupid shit. No wonder a couple of passionate devs managed to destroy everyone’s poopers. Godspeed!
As for AI, plagiarism, asset flip and so on – if Nintendo and others can’t put their IPs to good use – they shouldn’t have it.

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31.01.24

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League

Batman gets shot in the face. Kevin died for and after this. That’s rough, buddy.
Sometime in 2021-2022 I wrote “A game famous for X starts doing CO-OP/Rogue-Like. Suicide Squad for example. Rocksteady will be dissolved a year after. Just like Visceral after BF:Hardline. The game itself will be like Marvel’s Avengers”

Everyone says it’s a rough start.
First (and only) review on metacritic is from Areajugones – 40. “the game falling short in almost every conceivable aspect”

First gameplay and visual difference between this and Arkham Knight. OOF!
October 2022 – Rocksteady co-founders are leaving the studio just months ahead of Suicide Squad’s release. Every time I see studios doing an oopsie I have to google if everyone simply left.
Searches for ‘Suicide Squad refund’ surge 791% following the game’s early access launch ‘disaster’

I watched 40 minutes of cutscenes and I’m not impressed.

• Makes sense for Harley to be in Arkham but others should be in Blackgate
• Brainwashed Justice League members don’t squash our squad then and there and instead give us enough time to regroup
• Batman is evil now. Somehow. HOW?!
• Every buildup ends with buzzkill.
• How the hell did Brainiac manage to brainwash our heroes? Especially Bats?
• Brainwashed heroes feels boring. No moral conundrums. No themes to explore. Injustice universe feels just right because holy hell Joker went too far this time.
• WW is the only one who gets a somewhat dignified death because her game is in development.

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Bloodlines 2

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 – Extended Gameplay Reveal

• Disastrous.
• Only 2 dialogue options: be a bitch or be a girlboss
• Phyre
• Her skin texture is atrocious! We’re gonna look at her for the duration of the game but they can’t even give her good skin. Is good skincare also politically incorrect now?!
• They concentrated on combat instead of dialogue. Combat is repetitive and dialogue is shit
• Don’t see any stats or RPG
• They directly stole from P.T. (loop and Nos’ jumpscare) and Control (Phyre’s thoughts)
• Feels like an Xbox 360 launch title. Like Condemned but with worse fist fighting system. Godhand was entertainier.
• Stealth is rudimentary
• Is it even lore friendly? I don’t think that VtM universe is about flashy effects and SIFU punches. To me it’s about how difficult everything is: surviving, fighting, scheming, preserving your humanity. Everything hurts even tho you’re already dead.
• Top 10 Games with Amazing First Person Melee Combat. I do own Zeno Clash! Gonna replay it
• I’m trying to remember a game where there was a similar combat system but MUCH better than what the Chinese Room has shown us. Not F.E.A.R., not Punch Your Boss. Assault on Dark Athena? I’m probably hallucinating Athena, Condemned and Zeno together. Anyway, those are all very old games that somehow manage to dunk on these bitches. Sad!

Verdict: I had no hope but holy shit

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Fucking First of February 2024 already. What a year!

State of Play | January 31, 2024

For quite some time I wanted to simply watch all the recent trailers and discuss what I see. Then compare the results

Helldivers 2
I don’t care about coops. I never played HD1 so I have no idea if what they showed me is satisfying or not. Looks like a slightly more polished Earth Defence Force with friends. I see potential in such an idea. Niche game for the fans. No problemo with this one.
The choice of music gives me hope.

Stellar Blade

• Narration. Fuck narration!
• Looks like an X360 launch title
• No gameplay
• They stole from Code Vein (visual vibes) and Nier Automata (populated areas)
• Good mid PR campaign video to once again remind people what the game has to offer but WHERE IS MY FUCKING GAMEPLAY! No gameplay – no buy. Prolly gonna be like Lost Planet at best. Lost Planet III at worst
• April 26 release and they showed ass no extensive gameplay. This is gonna be bad
• Stellar Blade (PS5) 4K 60FPS HDR (Gameplay Trailer). This is the only gameplay video I’ve found that contains exactly ONE gameplay scene. The enemy is too tanky and doesn’t have a lot of attack animations. Protag used healthpacks several times but I don’t know how exactly this mechanic works. I don’t see the number of healthpacks. Unknown how hard the game is going to be.

Sonic x Shadow Generations – I had no desire to play it then. I have no desire to play it now. They haven’t changed the formula in any way since 2006.

Zenless Zone Zero
No gameplay. Typical shovelware made by interns in order to teach them the basics. Harmless

FoamStars
Splatoon clone. Editing gives me epilepsy. No gameplay. Dead on Arrival

Dave The Diver
I heard the game is good and has tons of content. This is just a quick reminder for those who know.

V Rising
Diablo + Valheim + Furi?
Doesn’t tell me anything. Diablo is a dead franchise. The only Diablo killer out there is Path of Exile II
The devs haven’t made anything I know of
I won’t play it, anyway

Silent Hill: The Short Message
She said “What the fuck?!” Dropped it immediately. It’s our job to react to what’s happening on screen. When characters in horrors swear – they return us back into reality. That’s why the protag in Amnesia is silent apart from the prologue and that’s why James Sunnyland from Silent Hill 2 talks like that in cutscenes. You have to create an uneasy atmosphere.
But I’m rambling. It’s Konami. They haven’t done anything good in decades.

Silent Hill 2
QTEs. Fuck.
They still haven’t replaced James’ face
Combat is somewhat RE2R like but what about level design?
Not excited. This is the time to show us extensive gameplay but they just keep teasing us.

Judas
Why did they decide to use HL1 houndeye sound in the beginning?
Can’t hear shit
Still no gameplay. Bad rumors.
I just need a minimalistic Bioshock in my life.
No hope for this one at the moment

Metro Awakening VR
Looks like a slightly cheaper Alyx. That might do

Legendary Tales
VR messiah of might and magic.
UI is terrible tho
Not gonna buy

Dragon’s Dogma II
They show plenty of gameplay which is good. It’s a video game
But they also show the same shit. Attack -> jump on their backs -> more attacks -> Just off of their backs -> recharge
This is the only game right now that can succeed IMO. The devs are not afraid to talk and show DDII. I see some buzz. It has gameplay which is definitely unique by the Japanese standards. Not my jam but it has potential of becoming another money-making franchise in Capcom’s roster

Rise of The Ronin
Japanese AssAss Crude by a couple of former From employees it seems
Very mid but enjoyable. Hopeful for this one. (clear winner IMO)

Until Dawn
Rerelease? Update? For the fans. Don’t care

Death Stranding II

• The first teaser for DS was spectacular. This time is just classic Kojima again. If you dig it – you dig it. I’m indifferent.
• The only good thing about K’s games is that you immediately understand why we need new consoles
• Kojima believes that we’re a-OK with the original game, its story and gameplay
• He’s trying to bring people together. How idealistic. Where are the material conditions for that at the moment?
• 34:20 – more emptiness
• 34:57 – a more dynamic world but how scripted is it going to be?
• 36:01 – why explain everything? It’s like he’s apologizing for being so cooky. Drives me double mad: first for doing all this “artsy” shit in the first place and then for “dumbing down” it to our level. FUCK YOU, Kojumbus! You’re a hack and a fraud.
• Joel’s VA is alive. We kicked his butt with a suitcase before – we’ll do it again. It’s The Last Jedi all over again. What’s the point of searching for Luke if Kylo is a wimp? Fragile fucked the whole shit up for no fucking reason. Everyone is retarded in this story.
• Also they revealed him way too soon. Why? Is it a fake out? Of course not! Kojima is not that smart and he doesn’t believe that we require smarter stuff either
• 37:40 – this is just absurd. Why should I care about anything?
• Also Sam just disappeared altogether instead of shooting Higgs
• DSII is not even out yet and Kojima is already talking about something even bigger. Why wait for DSII then?

The problem with the first game was walking for 30 minutes with nothing happening on screen, boring quests, stupid story and no systemic gameplay.
I now see an even larger map, no quests, an even sillier plot with characters I don’t care about, and no significant gameplay changes apart from floods and background avalanches.

I also don’t want any talking male dolls near my buttocks NOR my crotch! How am I gonna piss with him being around?

Fuck, I watched all 26 hours of DS cutscenes TWICE and I’m gonna do it again for DSII analysis, don’t I? I mean, if you want to destroy something – you have to know everything about it. It’s gonna be oh. so. fun

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08.02.2024

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Rebirth Reprise Reimagining Reestablishment REEEEEEEEE

First, lemme tell you everything: I hate FF7R.

• Pay for one game 3 times
• Terrible level design, side-quests, new characters
• Rewrote the story. Nomura is a hack
• Tifa’s design just doesn’t click
• Everyone looks like Tifa now

But the way they handle Rebirth gives me hope (story aside because it’s already ruined beyond repair). DO NOT PREORDER

FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH Final Trailer

Pretty good. Music is good. Mostly cinematics but does contain more gameplay bits than Stellar Blade. Mechanics from Retrograde returned and this is great.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth – State of Play | PS5 Games

• 5:20 – I like how the devs are not afraid to stand in from of the camera and talk. That’s inspirational
• 6:59 – TONS of movement mechanics: running, jumping, swimming, chocobo, those two-wheel abominations, cars, planes
• Can they pull side-quests off? Doubt
• 9:50 – that mini-game seems like fun
• TONS of Gold Saucer minigames. The problem is that they don’t show them in full
• 12:40 – Retrograde mechanics of using your teammates’ weapons has returned and been expanded
• Team Synergy.
• Most importantly they immediately released a demo of Rebirth. CHAD move, not gonna lie

Extensive gameplay demos and featurettes are missing. Not sufficient info

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth – FULL DEMO

• 10 minutes of cutscenes. That’s not good
• The world is a lot more reactive. Everyone has something to say. Cool
• It’s mostly walking.
• 20:17 – TLoUII’s guitar mechanic
• 27:30 – too much walking. 7/10. Still linear but now they hide it better
• Combat is combaty. Visuals are visually
• 43:00 – Delays. Collect MAKO first to move forward. It’s something. The puzzle will repeat soon after without any changes. Bad
• Disappointed. Same AAA schlock: move, fight, watch cutscene, collect trash, QTE. The only good thing is that combat does feel good.

---

10.02.24

Alone in The Dark

#48. They talk about random bullshit instead of showing the goods
It’s really easy to detect bad games: even the devs don’t want to show them
No extensive gameplay – no buy. If the gameplay sucks ass – also no buy. Duh!

Well, actually they showed some gameplay. Weird that I didn’t notice it before. It’s like they’re hiding it from us.

• First of all: yep, it’s bad. Characters can’t shut the fuck up and there is no sense of claustraphobia
• After just one minute of “gameplay” they activate fast paced montage. IT’S FUCKING HORROR YOU DUMB CUNTS! It’s supposed to be scary, not action’y
• It looks cheap
• Cheap jumpscares

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14.02.24

Nobody is doing this so I have to

• Ubisoft CEO dubs Skull and Bones a AAAA game. The last “AAAA” game was Callisto Protocol. Failed horribly
• Silent Hill 2 Trailer Reportedly Showed Old Build From 2023. The last company that tried this argument was EA with its BF2042. Failed horribly (at least at launch).
  16,113 24-hour peak vs Baldur’s Gate’s 128,567 24-hour peak for example
• Stellar Blade. You can talk about sexualization and objectivization of women all you want I still won’t buy it. It’s “Killzone 2 initial trailer” level bullshit. It’s another No Man’s Sky. New Aliens: Colonial Marines. We’ll see if I’m right. Besides her design IS bad. It’s not memorable unlike 2B’s or even FFXIII’s Lightning. The last gameplay trailer showed footage from several versions of their “game” that all look vastly different sometimes.

26.02.24

Wanted to share my thoughts about February releases at the end of the month but just couldn’t hold my load anymore

• Suicide Squad – 680 players right now; 946 24-hour peak; 13,459 all-time peak 22 days ago. The game is dead
• HellDivers 2 – 399,876 players right now; 458,046 24-hour peak. “Niche game for the fans. No problemo with this one.” You just have to make it fun. But the game is glitchy as fuck, there is only so much content, their anti-cheat is whack so now everything depends on how fast they’d be able to solve technical issues and add new content.
  Personally, I give it a year. They use a discontinued Engine, nobody expected the game to succeed as much as it did, adding new content is hard even on UE5, there is only so much you can do with PvE, Fortnite and others will introduce similar mechanic in the next season
  HD2 is a co-op winner of the month. Just look at
  • Valheim: 15,133 players right now vs 502,387 all-time peak 3 years ago
  • Back4Blood: 1,040 players right now vs 65,987 all-time peak 2 years ago
  • Phasmophobia: 13,463 players right now vs 112,717 all-time peak 3 years ago
  • Risk of Rain 2: 6,964 players right now vs 71,548 all-time peak 4 years ago
  • Warhammer: Vermintide 2: 1,366 players right now vs 104,323 all-time peak 16 months ago (23,725 players play Left4Dead 2 right now)
    (I just noticed that it’d have been better to take 24 hour peak so take RN*2 or 2.5)
• Nobody likes Skull&Bones. User score is 3.5. Metascore – 60. The whole premise of EGS was concentrated “on providing a curated selection of high-quality games”. Skull and Bones
• Palworld – the hype is gone. I repeat: THE HYPE IS OVER. 339,873 24-hour peak VS 2,101,867 all-time peak last month
• Man, I remember when Velheim was a HUGE deal. This little table creates a really interesting picture: the success of these co-op games have little to do with quality and more with the hype cycle. Streamers constantly try new things and sometimes, some games scratch that particular seasonal itch.
  Reviewers have to remind people that these games have enough fun only for a month or two. Hypedware
  But why some games succeed and have a long term playerbase and other die in just a couple of months? I guess it’s the “last mile” effect. The game has to just work – no internet connectivity issues, no serious bugs. Be fun and provide just enough randomness
• Games I have absolutely no hope for still (with some exceptions):
  • Hellblade 2: there is no game. It’s going to be a walking simulator at best with no interesting ideas. The fight against giants won’t even be in it
  • Stellar Blade: there is no game. It’s just butt ad.
  • Alone in the Dark – useless trash
  • Final Fantasy VII Rebirth – sales underperformance
  • Foamstars – dead on arrival. No beta test + visual chaos
  • Dragon’s Dogma 2 – might be somewhat profitable and find its audience
  • Rise of the Ronin – have hope for this one. No preorders
  • South Park: Snow Day – dead on arrival. 3D multiplayer SP nobody asked for. No beat test
  • Black Myth: Wukong – August 2024. Yeah, I doubt that the game even exists. I see it as a collection of arenas and undercooked mechanics.
  • Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 – the game that will end Saber. I’ve heard rumors that the game is a mess and the company is not doing good. It’s their last change to make money and I don’t see the game being anything but a solid 6/10
  • Death Stranding 2: On the Beach – 10 million sales in 2022. It’s going to sell a lot less than that this time because Kojima is selling his brand left and right at the moment in order to stay relevant in this news cycle. DS2, OD, some spy game, movies. I didn’t see anything interesting in DS2 trailer that’d make me go WOO
  • Dune: Awakening – going to be cancelled. Who needs this game?
  • Hyenas – already cancelled
  • Judas – depends on their extensive gameplay trailer. If it’s a small but solid game that doesn’t try too hard to be the next Bioshock (in terms of scale and budget) – then it might find its audience. But I’m skeptical. The ending is going to be absolutely atrocious
  • Little Nightmares 3 – another studio makes this game. Co-op. no hope
  • Marathon – boring slop. Probably would be cancelled or development hell
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Remake – Konami is shit. Into the trash without blinking
  • Pragmata – there is no game.
  • Silent Hill 2 Remake – Konami + Bloober = shit. I already see articles talking about awful production cycle, low budget, problems with communication, how nobody wanted to work on the game.
  • Star Wars: Outlaws – hopefully it will tank Ubisoft for good.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 – TBA. The game is going to be Phyre
  • Wolverine – either mediocre or Insomniac’s TLoUII. Definitely going to be debatable&divisive
  • STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl – oof.
  • Avowed – the one that will hopefully tank Obsidian but I doubt. These guys will outlive even cockroaches
  • Fable – it was probably cancelled already. No hope for this one
  • Hollow Knight: Silksong – I heard there is plenty of drama around it. Don’t care. It’s too niche for me
  • Indiana Jones and the Great Circle – Machine Games haven’t made anything good since The New Order (maybe The Old Blood) + it’s Indiana + Todd is involved. It’s not the Next Big Thing. I doubt it’d sell more than 3 million copies and even that is a stretch
  • Marvel’s Blade – Arkane is dead
  • OD – I doubt the game even exists. I think someone is using Kojima to hype up the news cycle, increase Sony’s and Microsoft’s evaluations and throw him for good after everyone gets tired of the shtick
  • The Outer Worlds 2 – the world has changed since the release of BG3. You need a completely different RPG framework from now on. People are going to compare it to BG3 and the results won’t be in favor of TOW2 or Avowed
  • Perfect Dark – just cancel it already
  • Routine – just cancel it already
  • Homeworld 3 – very niche. If the budget wasn’t huge – might succeed
  • inZoi – The Sims clone that doesn’t exist
  • DokeV – GTA/Pokemon clone that doesn’t exist
• Only Dragon’s Dogma II and Rise of The Ronin might cause big waves IMO. Obviously there are going to be more hidden gems

---

04.03.24

March already. Jesus!

A couple of little snippets from the world of vydia while it’s still hot

• Neil Druckmann Doesn’t Have Many More Big Games To Make, Longs For “Low-Key” Life. Oh, no. How sad. But don’t get complacent. The work of dismantling his legacy and the system that gave him power has only just began. We have to prevent another Druckmann from happening ever again. There are several ways to do it:
  • Teach people how good storytelling works
  • Show them how good storytelling works
  • Seizing control from these fuckers and make them squeal in the Shame Corner
• Someone created a group that detects games if Sweet Baby was involved. SBI didn’t like it and tried to block the group and everyone involved. It backfired spectacularly.
  So they do know that what they do is wrong. All they had to do was to do proof readings instead of “sensitivity readings”. I’m writing an article on them. Stay tuned. My thesis: they wanted to create a niche for themselves (“hire us and we’ll greenlight a tranche of Blackrock money in your favor for a little kickback in our favor”) but it backfired (or not) because they couldn’t keep their mouths shut and clean up their act.
  SBI and others keep crying “muh representation”. Represent me a good story, bitches
• Everyone likes FF7 Rebirth it seems. 9/9 on Metacritic. They keep messing with the story but this time they decided to tone it down a bit.
  Watching it on YT and I’m pleasantly surprised. It’s a major upgrade over FF7R and Intergrade. It has great minigames and interesting missions. It’s an actually big game in terms of size and content. It’s not Ubisoft “rich”.
• Still thinking about Stellar Blade. They got me. They fucking got me.
  I’m seeing gameplay snippets and it’s the perfect PR campaign for the TikTok generation.
  It has everything: sex appeal, reason for stirring drama, cool visuals, references to much better games, very short and easy to digest gameplay footage that actually looks good TBH.
  This “gaem” has succeeded already, intentionally or not. Perfect bait in these trying times

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8.03.24

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Launch Week Sales Significantly Lower Than Final Fantasy 16 in Japan

“The game sold 263,000 copies, a significant figure but not enough to reach the heights of its predecessor, which had sold 703,000 units during its launch period in 2020, or even Final Fantasy 16, which recorded 336,000 sales at its release, as per Famitsu.”

I’m analyzing the game right now and it has its moments: budget, scale, some missions. But all the good stuff happens so infrequently that you begin to snooze for the majority of time.
They also FUCKED every major scene UP. Stepbrother in flames, Hollerith’s death, That giant snake on a pike. Added useless QTE, added more “drama”
All things considered, it’s a really minimal update over the previous installment. Still a grindfest where good shit is spread way too far apart

Most importantly you have to pay AGAIN for part 2 out of 3(?)

We’d need 2 new remakes after taking control of the means of production:

1. Remake the original game 1:1. Turn-based combat, top-down camera. All that. Just redraw every backdrop, character, 60PFS everywhere. All that. Add better tutorial explaining how to get certain stuff. Several quality of life improvements like turning random encounters off, accessibility options, fast combat, toggle visuals. All. That
2. A modernized experience akin to the current remake but all the changes need to be fan-base approved. Do we need Crisis Core and Dirge meta? How much do we want to expand certain areas? It has to use CGF. FF7OG was fast. Every location mattered. Most importantly, how do we want to incorporate all the lore that was created later? It should make sense, be coherent, expand rather than rewrite

---

9.03.24

Stellar Blade DEMO is out. I repeat! The ass and tits are out!

• The opening cutscene reminds me of old anime like Legend of the Galactic Heroes.
• 7:50 – fucking QTE
• 9:00 – so the game does exist
• 9:55 – invisible walls. HAHAHAHA
• Enemies are not so tanky
• I don’t know what we’re fighting for or against. The enemy variety is lacking
• 20:23 – the visuals are taken directly from Gears of War but more bland
• 22:25 – some delays
• we can swim
• 24:24 – save mechanic from FF7 Remake
• This game is not trying to copy Nier: Automata or Souls. It’s FF7R
• 29:30 – simple platforming
• Exploration is really barebones
• Combat is nothing in particular. God of War from PS2 had a much better combat system, interesting situations and puzzles
• What’s the point of scanning if the game is completely linear? Because the game has no level design whatsoever.
• These gates we have to open don’t look serious. We can cut through them
• Her design is not good. 2B looked like a maid because she served humanity. There was a point behind her outfit. Eve’s outfit is overly designed. I don’t know why she looks the way she does especially considering that her male buddy looks more or less on point given the setting
• To reiterate on Eve’s design, Lily and Tachy look better than Eve. Tachy also has a more suitable attitude for the task
• There are several enemy types but they’re all functionally the same: CQC, they attack – you block
• We don’t have any interesting finishing moves
• We walk around and fight. No interesting setups, no interesting lore, no level design. Nothing
• Skill Tree is taken directly from Assassin’s Creed
• Important lore regarding Even and the guy is given to us using black and white pictures
• 1:09:00 – Boss fights are somewhat fun but EVERY enemy should been like that
• No weird Yoko Taro lore to keep me invested

So much talks and drama and all for what?!

Boring, forgettable, 6/10 slop that people would forget within a week.
Remember how much stuff did Nier:Automata had. Action, sidescroller, bullet hell, hacking, 2.5D, GIANT boss battles.
Everything they’ve shown is either stolen from some other game (visuals – Gears of War; Heroine – Nier: Automata; save stations, combat and upgrades – Final Fantasy 7 Remake) or just plain worse than God of War from PS2 – combat is worse, platforming, dynamic, puzzles, art style, pacing

The only thing I truly appreciate about current day Korean devs is that they understand marketing: know your audience -> show some interesting concept be it twink Pinocchio or K-Pop doll with swords -> leave it to simmer while feeding people little snippets of info like “Stellar Blade developers fired two feminists from their company” -> really stick to your vision and defend it politely but firmly online (or just shut the fuck up)-> show actual gameplay + demo only one month before release so those who already bought your cool-aid can’t back down after seeing that it’s just a worse copy of some already existing game that itself isn’t that good to begin with compared to some masterpieces from PS2

Charlatans, but entertaining charlatans
Feels good to be correct every once in a while. It is indeed Lost Planet

But just in case, let’s do FAtF(aB) analysis

Stellar Blade – First 40 minutes (Demo)

1. 00:00 – cutscene (remove 2 minutes)
2. 2:50 – QTE
3. 3:50 – Move forward
4. 3:55 – Combat
5. 4:29 – tutorial – jump
6. 4:42 – Cutscene
7. 4:51 – New enemy
8. 5:35 – filler combat + new mechanic (healing)
9. 6:26 – Blockbuster Run
10. 7:00 – cutscene
11. 8:42 – Boss battle + cutscene (remove 2 minutes)
12. 12:40 – change of assets + cutscene
13. 14:51 – move forward + combat
14. 15:15 – delay
15. 15:49 – filler
16. 16:09 – new mechanic (save + upgrade)
17. 18:46 – new enemy
18. 19:35 – Collectathon
19. 19:52 – platforming
20. 20:25 – combat
21. 22:34 – cutscene
22. 24:48 – Big Battle
23. 26:25 – platforming filler
24. 27:15 – new mechanic – swimming
25. 28:06 – puzzle – reach that ladder
26. 28:50 – new enemy – shield guy
27. 30:20 – Collectathon
28. 32:00 – filler battle + lore
29. 33:44 – cutscene
30. 36:01 – tutorial
31. 37:10 – boss battle

33*60/31 = 63.87 seconds between moments. Lagging.
10 notable gameplay moments not counting filler and cutscenes

1. QTE
2. Move forward
3. Combat
4. Tutorial
5. New enemy
6. New mechanic
7. Boss battle
8. Collectathon
9. Platforming
10. Puzzle

Better than Jericho but still no level design, no story, no feel of progression, nothing unique or challenging.
Once they introduce some puzzle or delay – they use it constantly without any evolution on the formula. Even FF7RR got the memo
I can’t repeat it often enough: Unreal Engine solved visuals but scripting is shit. VERY difficult and not at all intuitive. Every button, widget, UI/UX element has to be programmed from scratch each time. Animation and AI sub-systems feel like they were created specifically for large teams. “We’ll delegate it to someone else, anyway”
You can’t simply save and import essential pieces of code/blueprints into your project.
Default character rigs can’t even crouch!
Default animations have to be imported from UE4 first and then added using a crazy amount of clicks. Character blueprint, input (twice: actions and IMC_Default), update animations. That’s why games are stagnating.
I don’t have time nor money to spend a year or two to fully immerse myself in Unreal.
The vast majority of courses, free or paid, are total dogshit.
Unreal has 2(!) stores for assets.
Tons of little annoyances like each file opens in a new window rather than a tab.
The budgets are ballooning because these engines are built in such a way where you have no other option but to “delegate” some tasks to someone below you instead of dealing with them yourself. It’s just WAAAAY too painful to do it personally. You won’t find a lot of AI, Animation, UI tutorials out there.
Niagara and PCG are also hard. Weirdly enough, Cascaded Particle Systems is more intuitive than Niagara to me and PCG is glitchy and requires a completely different way of thinking.
You might think that in order to start creating a procedurally generated content you first have to manually create a scene that you like and then ask the system to scale it up or down but NO: you have to mess with nodes first without knowing what would happen and the results might not even compile at all because FUCKING splines glitched out again.
I’m going back to theorizing until you fix this. They’re never gonna fix this. Nobody’s gonna give it to ya. Wanna something? Do it yourself. Come and get it. Shit. I’m so fucked. Stick to what you can do well – be miserable

I just found out that Stellar Blade is PS5 exclusive. HAHAHAHA!
So much good news. If only it was profitable.
It also confirms my suspicion that SB is not a game because PlayStation has no games

BTW what happened to Abandoned by Blue Box Game Studios?

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10.03.24

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is confirmed to run at an uncapped frame rate targeting 30 fps – dropped. The game doesn’t look like “we need 30FPS because there is so much logic happening behind the scenes”
Also weird choices regarding save scumming. Some think it’s a problem because branching narratives is a staple of RPG genre but I see no issue with it. Let people play the way they want to play. Let them experiment the way they feel like.
And if you want to design your game a certain way – make sure it actually flows as it should.
The dev says “it makes people think differently”. Oh, really? Provide some proof
When devs say shit like that they’re assuming things about their player-base and then get surprised when people refuse to participate in their charades altogether.
I doubt that one save file and no fast travel would cause the intended effect. The world doesn’t seem populated enough with content to keep backtracking through it again and again.
Another thing: they showed us the sphinx and told everyone that you may not even find her. The first thing people will do is go and find her as soon as possible. Now show us what else we may not find in this game? The enemy variety is not as impressive as in Soulsborne games. I didn’t see no interesting builds, items, spells, locations, anything.

DUNE AWAKENING New Gameplay Demo 12 Minutes 4K

• Immediately so bland and uninspiring. Hideo and Neil spoiled us with weird, well-put together trailers
• Why do they have guns? Shields in Dune Universe protect you from ordinary projectiles but explode when you shoot them with lasers
• 0:34 – looks like SWTOR MMO
• 3:00 – it’s a base builder. Dropped. It’s a motherfucking Dune with all its history and lore and they’re making a base builder game. This is delusional. Don’t tell me about Dune II. That game basically invented the RTS genre as we know it. The demands were lower yet Westwood still delivered.
• First trailer but it’s cooked like a technical featurette to be uploaded right before the release of the game. An appetizer before the release. PR guys should be fired on the spot.
• They also included a couple of movie shots from the movie for some reason. To create a feeling that these explosions will be in the game, too? Scummy.

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18.03.24

Feeling bored. Might delete later.

• ‘Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection’ Is Steam’s 9th Worst-Scored Game Ever As Aspyr Issues New Statement. And someone wanted these people to remake KOTOR. B is for Business. B is for Bullshit
• Solo HELLDIVERS 2 on Max Difficulty. Watched it. It’s basically HL2 Sandtraps with MGSV movement. WOW! How little we need to jizz our pants. That’s not even sarcasm. I do have a chance, I have an idea but I need someone who knows game engines.
  Here is a formula of how to make the next Big Thing: Take 2 great games. Steal 1 thing from both of them be it movement, artstyle, some mechanic. Combine them in a fun way and make it co-op multiplayer
• GamerGate II. SJW and anti-SJW are on the same team. It’s a false flag. They pretend to hate each other in order to squeeze money from losers. They know what would incite drama and purposefully throw gasoline canisters into a fire they themselves created. The best strategy is not to play their stupid games
  Their job is to keep us occupied while they hoard all the money and destroy our planet in the process. They don’t want us to start asking “why do these people keep making games if they hate games and gamers? Maybe they shouldn’t have any say whatsoever”
• Palworld – 138,585 24-hour peak.
• The Crow – Official Trailer (2024) Bill Skarsgård, FKA twigs, Danny Huston. Not a game but still. Piano note in the beginning. Hip-Hop. That drum they use constantly should be known just as Wilhelm scream. The hero has what I call the “Hayden voice” – a voice too pussy to belong to such a supposedly badass character. Colors are basic bitch. Where is Nicolas Winding Refn when you need him? And once again, where is tension if you know that he’s immortal. And why do we even need this remake?
• Capcom released a character creator for Dragon’s Dogma 2. Perfect PR thus far. Give people something to do while waiting for the game. DD2 has a good chance of becoming the next big franchise with stuff like that. Capcom is on a roll. But the framerate. Dropped the ball with that one.
• Vindictus. It takes too much time to kill enemies, graphics are basic. No level design. Nothing to do besides killing minotaurs. No fatalities. Is it an MMO? SP?
  The protag has features but the rest of the game is bland.
  From each according to their ability to each according to their taste but I don’t find boobies that move like 2 plastic bags full of milk all that appealing. I want them heavy and meaty. Dropped

Xbox Partner Preview | March 2024

• Unknown 9 – Assassin’s Creed but worse. Dropped
• Sleight of Hand – CGI trailer. Dropped
• The Alters – actually something. Want an extended gameplay trailer
• Creatures of Ava. Rihanna Pratchet is involved. Why should I care? She can’t write for shit. Also no gameplay so dropped
• Roblox. Don’t play don’t care
• The Sinking City 2. CGI. Dropped
• FF14. Whatever
• STALKER on Xbox. Whatever
• Monster Jam. Motorstorm but only with one type of vehicle. Dropped
• Persona 3. Whatever
• The First Berserker. It’s just Darksiders + anime. At least they showed some gameplay but it’s a C game
• Tales of Kenzera. Ori and Torchlight in Africa. Has some potential but SO derivative
• Frostpunk 2. Clearly only for those who played the first one. Doesn’t capture my attention
• Kunitsu. Camera placement is atrocious. Okami vibes but in a bad way: derivative. Animations are too slow. I don’t exactly get what the game is all about. Build a base and defend it against monsters?

The Alters is the only game that actually explains what it’s all about.
Others are not even games! 2 CGI trailers in 2024. All shit feels so derivative and forgettable

Top 16 Amazing New Games coming out in 2024

• Vasya Run. Looks like a perfect C game. Waiting for the extended
• Terminator Survivors. CGI. Dropped immediately
• The Midnight Walkers. Another zombie survival. Dropped
• The Last Sentinel. CGI. Dropped
• Infestation Origin. Mickey Mouse Horror. Cheap. Skipping

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End of March

IN a right ordering of public affairs, the mass is that part which
does not act of itself. Such is its mission. It has come into the world
in order to be directed, influenced, represented, organised- even in
order to cease being mass, or at least to aspire to this. But it has not
come into the world to do all this by itself. It needs to submit its life
to a higher court, formed of the superior minorities. The question
as to who are these superior individuals may be discussed ad
libitum, but that without them, whoever they be, humanity would
cease to preserve its essentials is something about which there can
be no possible doubt, though Europe spend a century with its head
under its wing, ostrich-fashion, trying if she can to avoid seeing
such a plain truth. For we are not dealing with an opinion based on
facts more or less frequent and probable, but on a law of social
“physics,” much more immovable than the laws of Newton’s
physics.

THE REVOLT OF THE MASSES by Jose Ortegay Gassett

• BBC Gaming Presenter Jules Hardy Calls For Current Sweet Baby Inc. Discourse To End With A “Final Purge” Of Ideological Opponents From The Medium.
  Lets! The season has now officially been declared open. In order to win we’d need our own media, infrastructure, organic intellectuals, books, games, party and so on. We have to fight.
  Just read the Power Memorandum: “What specifically should be done? The first essential — a prerequisite to any effective action — is for businessmen to confront this problem as a primary responsibility of corporate management.
  The overriding first need is for businessmen to recognize that the ultimate issue may be survival — survival of what we call the free enterprise system, and all that this means for the strength and prosperity of America and the freedom of our people.“
  The proles need such memorandum. This is our world. We are the ones who create value. Get rid of these parasites and bloodsuckers and get in charge
• Alone in The Dark is out and it’s actually has 😏 76.19% on Steam BUT
  228 players right now; 506 24-hour peak; 1,628 all-time peak 8 days ago
  I was totally right about that one. Nobody needs that game because it can’t even do what RE2R did several 5 years ago.
  I watched a walkthrough. Typical TPS. Not a horror. Enemies are easy to kill and avoid. Monsters are poorly designed. Plenty of resources. It’s not dark. Most importantly it doesn’t add anything new to the table. It’s generic
• Project Birdseye | First Look. Striking Distance are scumming again. This teaser is not even about the game itself. It’s an ad for their next unannounced “AAA” game. The game itself looks like another mobile trash. Drawn to Death + Alien Swarm. Enemies are too spongy and weapons are boring. Better play Vampire Survivor
• I also wanna talk about movies. Furiosa doesn’t look good. Tons of obvious CGI, repeat of Fury Road, no interesting setups, no mindbending chase sequences. Furiosa is chasing Thor. Fury Road showed really well that you can’t chase your personal dreams in this wasteland. Also don’t forget that Miller sued Warner after Fury Road over money
  Also also don’t forget that Fury Road was written and drawn over many years. Welp, FR is almost 10 years old already so not an argument.
  Still no hope. The trailers fail to capture my imagination.
• Star Wars: The Acolyte. More girlbosses. Nobody likes it. I just really hope it’d contain all the girlboss tropes imaginable: psychotic, Mary Sue protag who doesn’t listen to anybody yet still wins because all her enemies are even dumber. Enemies who make obvious mistakes, retarded Force Powers, gay shit, dunking on the lore, Epstein/Weinstein jokes about what happens behind close doors at the Jedi Academy, POWERFUL ARTIFACT that’s more powerful than the Death Star, traitor that can be discerned immediately but the creators still pretend it’s not him until the last episode, irrational behavior. I want everything. I want it to be so bad it’s good. I want a lolcow. I’ll watch the show. I haven’t seen anything since TCW S07 but I have to see this one now.
  I wonder how these YT SW lore guys are feeling right now.
  2013 – I’m gonna create a YT channel discussing all things SW. That’s a sureshot. I’m set for life! Endless content.
  2015 – I can live with that.
  2017 – oh, shit.
  2019 – *dies of cancer*
• Marvel 1943. No gameplay. Apparently all in engine (UE5.4) but can modern consoles even run this beauty at 30FPS?
  “I’m more concerned with a six foot cat man who’s got claws that can cut through vibranium alloy”. If you don’t take it seriously – I won’t either. It’s not Uncharted Amy! It’s WW2.
  Cap sounds like a pussy.
  It’s WW2 France and I still have to look at black on white violence. Why can’t we unite for once in our shared hatred towards the French? I’m tired of American politics. Lets ruin their economy so they won’t be able to promote their vision no more
• Chrono Odyssey Trailer | State of Unreal 2024. Still doesn’t look feasible. MMOs have to create new content (assets and logic) FAST and they haven’t shown us any tools to speed the content creation process up. Dead on Arrival
• Dragon’s Dogma II. 😐 55.21% on SteamDB.
  91,076 players right now 124,994 24-hour peak 228,585 all-time peak 5 days ago
  The numbers keep falling but it’s the most popular new release right now
  “But they’ll always find a way to fuck everything up. What am I missing?”
  People hate poor performance, DLCs, worse than Dark Arisen mechanics wise, quests (told ya), endgame content, fast travel, character creation
  Some people say that paid DLCs were in RE4R and Yakuza but I don’t care. There shouldn’t be any paid DLCs at all. Back in my day we used to use cheats and ArtMoney instead of paying. People just noticed because the game is trash. Stays niche. Mayhaps will be remembered fondly after a couple of patches and FREE DLCs.
• Palworld – 39,144 players right now 68,865 24-hour peak
• Helldivers 2 – 187,708 players right now 268,483 24-hour peak 458,709 all-time peak last month. The numbers are falling but not as fast.
• Rise of The Ronin. Metacritic – 76/8.4. Generally favorable. “very mid but enjoyable”.
  “Even if we were talking about lifetime sales, none of Team Ninja’s previous titles have sold over 5 million copies. To put this into perspective, it took Nioh 2 nearly two years to reach 2.5 million copies in sales and it still hasn’t reached that figure alone.”. So yeah. I’d never praise another game in any way in the future. Sorry. Poor man’s Sekiro.
• Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn – Official Combat Overview Behind the Scenes Clip. From this point forward I’m skipping any game with exotic tomboys who kick ass. I still love them but don’t want to be disappointed with terrible story decisions and subpar realization of everything else.
  Funnily enough I immediately suspected SBI and lo and behold!
  Besides it’s just Forspoken meets Pathless
• Very interesting thing about SBI. I googled them for a bit just to see what’s what, figure out my attitude towards them and move on but YT keeps shoving them down my throat. I now have to click “not interested” and “do not recommend this channel” again and again. Google, Facebook and others want people to be more and more radicalized. I’m afraid we’re all victims here. ZUCC specifically pits us against each other so we won’t recognize our common interests: peace, unity, good games and stories. It’s a very specific strategy of showing us the most obnoxious elements from both camps and then forcing us to see them again and again until we start puking with blood and then steamroll those who punch first. Nothing new but still horrifying how fucking successful they are. Push all alternatives aside and make chaos and shit throwing contests slightly more profitable. Affordance trap in all its glory. And instead of relying on just one ideology there is now a whole buffet of them – pick your poison and dive deeper and deeper. Just don’t stop and look around.
• Death to EA now has 85 points that can help you detect bad games. Never suspected to reach that milestone
• Overwatch 2’s future PvE content has reportedly been permanently cancelled. yeah, they cancelled it back in May 2023. I dunno why everyone got mad again. It’s nu-Blizz. They can’t make anything right.
• South Park: Snow Day! Review. It’s shite. As was foretold
• Microsoft cautions developers to avoid curvy female characters. It’s not a fluke. It’s a policy.
• Are you reinforcing any negative gender stereotypes?
  • Are you unnecessarily introducing gender & gender barriers into your code or design? Who does that? Can you name even one game where that was the case? I only remember DWAR that had gender-locked classes.
  • Are you creating playable female characters that are equal in skill and ability to their male peers. Is that a positive or negative “gender stereotype”?
  • Are your female characters equipped with clothing and armor that fits their tasks?  Do they have exaggerated body proportions? Again, show me some examples of good and bad designs? What if it’s a toon? Toons have exaggerated proportions. Just look at TeamFortress 2. As for “clothing and armor that fits their tasks“: how should I know how mages are supposed to dress? Or space pirates? Or aliens with 8 legs or something? What if I want to make a trashy non-sense like Onechanbara? Should I dress them in Niqāb, too? It all depends on the setting and goal.
  •  When the story allows, do you show male characters who display a full range of emotions, including joy, sadness, and vulnerability? Again, is it a bad thing or a good thing? Should men emote more or less? I don’t get it.
• Incorporate stories and themes from marginalized communities or emerging markets in a relatable way. Who are these “marginalized communities”? How should we define them? Do they want to be represented? What does “relatable” mean? Don’t remember insufferable cunts being relatable. Ever.
  They don’t want to give voice to these communities.
  They want our money but not our feedback.
  And Microsoft doesn’t wanna hear anything but “Oh, we praise America”
  They want to see new faces but don’t want to hear new voices and opinions
  “Do you have a process to review key decisions with the lens of Helping Customers Feel Seen?” I like Hamlet, CJ from GTA San Andreas, Spike from Cowboy Bebop, Miles from Spider-Verse. I get them. I don’t have to see a 1:1 copy of myself to empathize with that. Considering how you’ve been treating me and the stuff I like over the past… ever – DON’T YOU DARE TOUCHING MY STUFF, MY PEOPLE, MY CULTURE! I’ll make myself seen when I feel like it. Fuck off.
  I gave you a quote from “The Revolt of The Masses” because this is what these people want. They think they’re superior minorities who lead the brute masses towards the future. It’s not the case. They’re blind kittens with too much power who need to be disciplined. We have to recognize ourselves as class for ourselves. We have to recognize that we have common interests. We have to unite and fast.
  Democracy is impossible without feedback and if those who are put in charge refuse to listen – get rid of them.

Judas.

• Obvious flop. No gameplay. Confusing premise. Known history of fuckups. Kenny sounds like a 14 year old boy who thinks that computer programs are created by endlessly talking to your monitor about how cool it would be to have cool mechanics, cooler than HL2, cooler than Larian, cool-cool-cool. So cool!
• Bioshock 15 years later without 2K money, interesting lore (just another existential dread of “am I still human if I’m a cold, dead machine?”) and a good producer behind his back
• “it triggers people”
• They played it for 5 hours but you’re not gonna see any of it
• I still don’t understand how this game is supposed to work. The journos don’t understand either. They never tell you what changed after doing the same quest twice
• Narrative lego – what’s the difference between that and any typical RPG or Larian’s N+1?
• All I see is when you don’t help the sheriff he’ll close the door in front of you. WOW!
• How does it differ from the Mafia 3 system?
  Cassandra = Nefertiti; Thomas Burke = Tom; Does that mean that Vito = Hope? Checks out. They all look kinda samey.
• But what does he want with his “narrative legos” (that actually look like tetrominoes so he fucked it up even here)?
  #1: Every time you start a game it mixes levels, goals, affinities. Hope helps you and Nefertiti wants to kill you. You finish one route and then you start again and now Nefertiti wants to save you and Tom wants to jettison you into outer space. Enemies become friends and vice versa. Even the most basic of enemies can be turned into friends at some point.
  Cool thing? They justify their actions using all the same sentences.
  We have to experience all three narratives (reach Proxima with Tom, Rebuild humanity as Nef and destroy Mayflower with Hope) by both helping these characters and then preventing them from achieving their goals.
  Since they’re robots we’d be able to reboot the system and make them forget some of the stuff we did
  #2: N+1. You play the game once but Levine has TONS of reactions based on who we help, what tools we use, how we approach combat and so on. Typical Skyrim with guns
  
  Both of these are unlikely because Levine is not known for any of that.
  I think he’d just have 3 factions, 3 types of monsters and if you help one faction the other will start blocking your path. That’s it.
  Replay Atomic Heart. That game already has better visuals, gameplay, and narrative. Or Prey: Mooncrash. Or Deathloop.
  Or Some if you want to enjoy the story I think Ken is aiming at (copying consciousness and cloning yourself leads to behavioral mutations)

Oh, and the last thing: Judas is a tomboy who kicks ass. FUCK!

• Clockwork Revolution – Official Reveal Trailer. Possible SBI. Too big for inXile. Bioshock Infinite copy-paste. Skip
• Voices of The Void is the game of the future. Really simple premise: search for signals and analyze them. You have to leave the base sometimes because the servers or the generator might crash. That’s the main goal.
  Then you have tons of secondary goals like cleaning the base, upgrading and defending it, buying food and fuel.
  If you want lore you can go exploring and finding all sorts of stuff, quests, adventures, challenges and easter eggs
  Most importantly it has random events that throw all your establish routine into the trashcan.
  Also alien bully catgirls from outer space. I want to bully them back bros like you wouldn’t believe
• Titan Quest 2: My Reaction on NEW Monthly Update of MARCH 2024! The game exists, apparently. No gameplay, some dude is talking about some screenshots and a wall of text #yeahrightibelieveyou.
  We already have The Last Epoch and Path of Exile. These games are fast, snappy, well tested, constantly being updated (at least PoE). What can TQ2 offer? What’s the point behind the game? Why should I care? What kind of problem are they trying to solve? I need a third person rogue-like with procedural generation that can generate levels both horizontally AND vertically. As an alternative – a 2.5D Zelda-like adventure with tons of unique mechanics OR some unique ways to interact with each enemy OR Dark Souls + Diablo
  As for the Ancient Greek lore I’d rather read a book, watch Hercules, and replay Hades.
  In total: worse gameplay than PoE and poorer lore than Hades. Verdict: dead on arrival
• Hellgate 2 is in development. They promise a “AAA” experience using UE5. “Details on the game haven’t been announced”. They’ll quietly cancel it in a couple of months. False alarm

---

April

• Hellblade 2 Only Runs 30 FPS. It’s Joever. The Romans have forgotten how to make 60FPS, good framepacing, good games in general. I know that it took Rome hundreds of years to finally fall only for the Byzantine Empire to survive for another 1000 years only to be sacked by Crusaders. Still a weird feeling knowing full well that the good days are over, fascism is on the rise and a lot of people are either fine or indifferent towards it.
  I have all the info in the world about every possible shit that had ever happened and I still don’t know what to do.
  Reading “Chaos Theory and Strategic Thought” by STEVEN R. MANN. Trying to understand all that Chaos Theory, Risk Management, vectors of attack, asymmetrical warfare, diversification of risks even tho I never even knew how to make concrete to begin with.
  My take is that you have to have several escape strategies, don’t put all eggs in the same basket, rely on several income sources, know a bit of everything like EDC, urban and wilderness survival, be sure to lose some, don’t hope to get anything good outta it. Always know slightly more than the next guy.
  The point is: right now I see no way of winning this fight. The goal is to lose as less as possible while searching for the opening, talking to people, uniting with those who have similar taste in politeconomy. Obviously that if someone would wanna bash my skull against the wall – they wouldn’t have a problem with that. But I see Chaos as as cloud of oppotunities – always changing but within certain limits. There are only so many things that can happen at the end of the day. There is a limited amount of attack vectors. Some more probable than others.
  Too bad that there is also a possibility for a perfect storm of bullshit. Flood (happened twice in the last 3 years), earthquake (experienced one this year. Wasn’t fun), fire (not to me but I know the guy), broke my leg (still hurts), uprisings and wars (too close to home), nationalism, fascism, jingoism – so many -isms and all of them demand poor people’s blood while King Charlie’s ass sits on red velvet! I want all of their heads to paint my velvet red.
  As for Senua – May 21, 2024 release date and we still have no gameplay, no demo, nada. IGN is managing their PR campaign while the devs themselves promote UE5, that retarded GoT battle and The Norseman which flopped. This time I see no interesting concept behind the game.

Ум полководца никогда не должен быть заранее скован и связан предварительными точками зрения. Полководец должен иметь достаточный запас возможных планов и комбинаций и обладать способностью быстро применять их или выбирать между ними. Человек, склонный превращать работу анализа в подтверждение заранее принятой им идеи, человек, находящийся во власти предвзятых точек зрения, никогда не сможет быть хорошим полководцем

Гибким должен быть ум полководца, твердой – его воля

Теплов – Ум Полководца

• Suicide Squad. The only way to save the game is for the devs to go to war with its audience. I want it dead. They should say “Fuck you! We’re gonna run the servers until the heat death of the Universe while also slowly adding all the shit we always wanted”. That’s the only way to make it fun. Go No Man’s Sky route rather than Marvel’s Avengers.
  638 players right now 840 24-hour peak 13,459 all-time peak 2 months ago
  Buckshot Roulette:
  6,291 players right now 6,978 24-hour peak 6,978 all-time peak 2 hours ago
  Path of Exile (2013 game)
  93,558 players right now 105,777 24-hour peak 211,637 all-time peak 12 months ago
• Freeman’s Mind creator Ross Scott launches Stop Killing Games initiative to challenge legality of game destruction. “If we can find even one major country to penalize this practice, that might fix everything,” In addition, France, where Ubisoft is headquartered, has strong consumer protection laws, so if the initiative succeeds, this may launch a chain of events and become a precedent.
  https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
  That’s a good start but we shouldn’t stop there. Our goes should be to own and control all major vydia companies and for that we’d have to get in charge of govenments. Workers of the world – UNITE! Governments are just tools in the hands of the ruling class. You want to change how they operate – become the demos. Unless you can directly vote for/against and affect the laws and rules being implemented – nothing will change. I hope this campaign will help radicalize youngsters into a right direction because the alternative is death and destruction.

The more important leaders of the Proletariat, in its councils, and the press, fall one after another victims of the courts, and ever more questionable figures step to the front. It partly throws itself it upon doctrinaire experiments, “co-operative banking” and “labor exchange” schemes; in other words, movements, in which it goes into movements in which it gives up the task of revolutionizing the old world with its own large collective weapons and on the contrary, seeks to bring about its emancipation, behind the back of society, in private ways, within the narrow bounds of its own class conditions, and, consequently, inevitably fails. The proletariat seems to be able neither to find again the revolutionary magnitude within itself nor to draw new energy from the newly formed alliances until all the classes, with whom it contended in June, shall lie prostrate along with itself. But in all these defeats, the proletariat succumbs at least with the honor that attaches to great historic struggles; not France alone, all Europe trembles before the June earthquake, while the successive defeats inflicted upon the higher classes are bought so easily that they need the brazen exaggeration of the victorious party itself to be at all able to pass muster as an event; and these defeats become more disgraceful the further removed the defeated party stands from the proletariat.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx

• Project Apidom – Official Cinematic Trailer. Finally someone’s using the word “cinematic” correctly. Oh, wait. I was thinking about “gameplay trailer”. Whatever. IGN is promoting trash. It all looks incredibly cheap.
  “free-to-play multiplayer RPG MOBA extraction shooter”. Yep. Skip
• “But what about ‘СМУТА’“ you may ask? I never talked about this game before because I legit thought it was just an internet meme. People just collectively decided that this game should be in development in order to create memes about how it’s perpetually in development. Just two weeks ago I learned that no, it’s real, but I immediately assumed that it’s pre-pre-pre-alpha and that the release date is scheduled somewhere around 2026-27.
  As far as I know everyone got precisely what they expected: a buggy mess
• Amazon Fallout? It’s Toddfall, not the real thing. Skip
• Star Wars Outlaws: Official Story Trailer – this gamer boy is about to ruin this trailer like he ruined online games (I should really stop reading all of this shit. It’s bad for my psyche. These people were all told that “white males” are members of the same club (“Manhole”) where Joe Biden, the ghost of Cecil Rhodes and some random Joe sit and talk about how to oppress Californian minorities by first giving them jobs at Disney but never make their slop as legendary and profitable as The Snow White or The Little Mermaid. It’s also all so dull. It’s all “white male” this and “white male” that. I really wish I was that fucking powerful, bitch!)
  • 0:30 – “Kay Vess. The Underworld’s favorite new scoundrel” – let me decide who’s going to be my new favorite.
  • 0:38 – she immediately points a gun at some seemingly very powerful dude. Bad call. He’ll remember that and use it against her at the first opportunity. Just watch Mike from Breaking Bad and how he handled a similar situation with Hector
  • Sliro wants us gone and so some dude tells us that we have to rob Sliro to buy her freedom. I don’t get it. She’s armed, well equipped, it’s a huge Galaxy. Who cares?
  • 2:00 – “She’s more connected than you let on, Sliro”. Huge mistake of these nu-stories is that they make their heroes more powerful than the villains thus robbing us of fun. You have to break your heroes, not help them! Keeping them (and thus us, too) in a state of uncertainty, fear, tension. We have to overcome obstacles using unconventional (but clearly established earlier thanks to SEED (I’ll explain later)) means. If Vess can overcome all that with a blaster and her pet – what’s the point?
  • Kay wants to live free. Free from what? Who captured her? What are the stakes? Why does Sliro hates some gal who doesn’t even have her own ship at the beginning of the game? Sliro and Kay don’t even interact with one another! And the merc he hired is a weak ass bitch who immediately gets her ass handed back to her so she goes back to Sliro and starts bossing him around. “You didn’t gimme enough information”. Cry me a river. None of my fucking problem. I told you to go and kill that woman, not lecture me about how much intel I should share with some randos. Get out of my sight!
  • Most importantly, she tried to outsmart Jabba the Hutt. Why?! It’s not Special Edition, girl. Why do I keep asking “why”? They disrespect the source material and self-insert themselves and their “politics” into everything because it’s a smoke screen to keep us occupied with petty squabbles and phantoms. Capitalists read Marx well and understood dialectics: the rabble has to be busy at all times! Stop telling them that everything is nice and dandy. No! The dragon and his orc army is attacking the castle. The Pricess has been slain by feeding her 40 cakes. Your house is next. People have to fight, debate, scream, maim and kill each other even during peace time. Capitalism has to provide all sorts of struggle but the class one. Waive a carrot in front of a donkey and it’ll get you far.
  • It’s Ubisoft. SBI is written all over (I mean, Kim started there for fuck’s sake!). Pre-Order bonuses. 3-day early access. Kay is immediately OP. Her enemies are buffoons. SW is dead. I need your consensus on things: should I skip all this culture war bullshit entirely or say something? I wanna skip it cuz it’s so boring but I have to because it’s life happening around us. I say skip it, anyway unless there is something new to add to “You can’t spell death” or “marketing conclusions”. if it’s a rehash – skip. If it’s fresh food – go. Got it. Thanks

The Triple-i Initiative 2024: A New Gaming Showcase

• Slay the Spire II. Never played. Skip
• Risk of Rain 2. Never played. Skip
• Kill Knight. Too flashy. Didn’t see enough gameplay. skip
• Shadows of Doubt. Familiar. Poorly optimized. Not my jam but if you’re into immersive sims – this is next gen
• My Time at Sandrock. Another Palworld. Skip. But it’s still an interesting concept
• Dinolords. Not enough WAAAAAGH!!! But I’m curious
• Gestalt: Steam & Cinder. C-game. Not my jam but looks fine
• Vampire Survivors (Playstation) – looks good
• Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn. Composer taks. Sound shit. SBI confirmed. skip
• Never Alone 2. No gameplay. Skip
• Cataclismo. No gameplay. Skip
• Death Must Die. Stupid name. VS clone. Meh
• Endzone 2. Not enough gameplay. Not my jam.
• Dyson Sphere Program (Update). Looks like Total Annihilation clone. Don’t care
• UnderMine 2. Zelda + Spelunky. Don’t care
• Norland. Am I supposed to be excited after seeing 30 seconds of something? Is that how they treat me? What kind of format is that? I have no idea how the game is going to be played.
• WHAT THE CAR? What indeed?
• RKGK / Rakugaki. Smells like SBI. Literally no gameplay! Blacklisted.
• Broken Roads. Don’t care
• Ravenswatch (Update) – rogue-like RPG. skip
• Cat Quest Ⅲ. No gameplay. Skip
• Hyper Light Breaker. At least they showed some gameplay.
• Laysara: Summit Kingdom. Personal want because they showed exactly what you’re going to do and a couple of challenges you’re going to face. If you have just 30 seconds, this is how you do it. Gameplay, obstacles, visuals.
• Streets of Rogue 2. Another example of how it’s done. I don’t like narration but when you only have 2 minutes – do whatever you can to deliver your idea. 2-3 minutes per trailer is good.
• MOUSE – need more gameplay
• The Rogue: Prince of Persia. Ubisoft. Nuff said. Lost Crown still costs $50 when it’s a $30 game to begin with

Skipped everything else because it’s either Vampire Survivor clone, or Civilization, or Hades
Streets of Rogue 2 is the ONLY trailer that I enjoyed. Long enough. Plenty of gameplay. Understand the general idea. It’s possible. I wish them luck

“Oh, you don’t say much about any of the games presented. Why should we take you seriously?”
“Shut up, bitch! They don’t deserve my comments. To say something costs $70. Extensive comment – $130. Say something nice – 1 gazillion dollars + their buttholes + the virginity of their cutest daughters”

---

• Despite being chronically online I only recently discovered that there are people who legit, unironically get mad when they see those “Hire the fans” photoshops. Why?
  • Retards
  • People who are actively trying to jump start their own online careers or “content creators” who continue milking their audience
  • Psyop. The word has been overused but let’s not forget that Facebook used its algorithms to successfully manipulate the moods of its users. The goal is to keep people occupied with bullshit by any means necessary
• What’s actually happening? Sometimes it’s really hard to pinpoint what’s wrong with the game/book/story/movie. Not everyone has time to rewatch “Every Frame a Painting” for 20th time over the past year. Sometimes there is no framework to describe what’s happening whatsoever or it’s too obscure for now like my “Cinematic Gameplay Framework”. So people start ranting about the thing they “understand”/something that’s obvious. They go for signifyers that bind everything together.
  Horizon is a forced AAA – boring, repetitive, shallow. But people want stimulation. They want to get everything they can from all of this and talking about Aloy’s face and sexual preferences activates the audience on every side so HERE WE GO, BABY!
  It’s about combining 2 and 2 together.
  Punk and Disney.
  Politics and Disney (What are Elsa’s political leanings and opinions?)
  Innocence and raunchiness
• Also let’s not forget that corpos just don’t respond to our feedback anymore. We’ve been voting with our wallets and screaming our lungs out since the release of The Last Jedi (at least) and we still have to deal with Mando S3 and Acolyte. Simply talking or ignoring is not enough anymore. More drastic actions have to be taken. Corpos no longer have to make good products in order to stay afloat. They’re absolutely everywhere now. They have a stake in every possible venue: entertainment, robotics, military. Samsung not only makes TVs and refrigerators but also tanks and ships. Chaebols and investment companies like Blackrock create privatized planned economies. Planned – based. Privatized – cringe
• Ultimately, we need a positive program. We have to talk not only about what we don’t like but also about what we need. What kind of culture of tomorrow we want to build and enjoy. But are we capable of taking that chance or would it require 800 years to finally figure everything out? Does it matter? Most of us are already dead. I keep thinking about my next step and the only winning strategy right now is “If only we could stand for a night and hold out for a day” from Malchish-Kibalchish.

---

• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Official Game Reveal
  Some Good news. Some HMMMM news
• Good news: 14 minutes of live action, cinematic trailer, developers talking, and gameplay footage. Release date – this year. They went all in and the public is reacting positively – 96k likes vs 374 dislikes at the moment.
• HMMMM: instead of showing as much gameplay as possible they decided to show little snippets and mostly concentrated on live action, developers patting themselves on the back, and over the top music performance. I hate when they show anything but the game.
  • This PR video cost money, renting that building for a night cost money, musicians cost money. Money that could’ve been spent ON THE FUCKING GAME!
  • SWTOR has great cinematics but the game sucks.
  • EA and Ubisoft make great cinematics but their “games” SUCK BALLS!
  • Show me the fucking gameplay.
  • What they’re doing is a sleigh of hand: while you’re looking at some sparkles over there, they rob you right here.
• BTW, the game doesn’t look all that upgraded compared to the first one.
  • CryEngine. Is it even alive? I know someone will mention Helldivers 2 but that game is not as complicated. Expect insane glitches and system requirements. Just like the first game
  • 2 maps. Loading screen. Fuck loading screens
• I need extensive gameplay footage
• As of right now it feels like a decent DLC at best. They’ll fix some issues, add plenty of new ones, repeat all the best beats without anything new. It won’t work on release. It won’t even work a year later. I feel like Vavra is trying to recapture lightning in a bottle one last time. He had an idea but certain limitations prevented him from achieving it.
  I also wanna know who funds the project this time. WIKI says it’s Plaion and Embracer. Embracer is not having a good time these days so I think the story goes like this: Dan just asked for funding back in 2018 promising to deliver their own Witcher 3, then he imported all the assets form KCD into 2 and repainted a couple of things. In 2023 the funding ran out so they decided to release now. KCDII doesn’t look like a game but more of a scheme to keep the light on.
• Do not preorder.
• Fuck them all. No exceptions. Not even for Concerned Ape or Supergiant.

---

No Rest For The Wicked.
It feels to me that the original people behind Ori are gone. Mahler and Korol are still there it seems. There are allegations of workplace abuse tho

One screencap of a work chat shared in the report shows Korol writing, “nobody cares what you think really” followed by Mahler writing, “lol, you’re retarded,” though it’s not clear who the remarks are directed at.

Wow, this is basically Pinochet level.
Nevertheless, the game is not optimized, our avatars look like shit, the whole aesthetics – I don’t dig it and the enemies are too tanky
It’s Diablo Ring – slower than Diablo and content poorer than Elden Ring

---

Stellar Blade

We all always say “If I’m wrong – I’ll simply admit it, accept reality and move forward with my life” from time to time
Welp, I guess I was wrong about Stellar Blade but first let me remind you why I was skeptical

• I’m skeptical out of principle. CP2077 on release destroyed all my hope and good will for this industry.
• I still think that Tachy’s design is just better suited for the game. EVE’s Planet Diving Suit (2nd) should’ve been her default suit. Other suits (apart from casual) feel out of place
• Adam doesn’t have any swim related suits.
• Their PR campaign. Now I see that they knew what they were doing and good for them but I fundamentally disagree. They showed nothign but cutscenes for years and then they “accidentally” dropped a demo before going all in. I guess it works with companies who have direct ties with Sony and a lot of PR power but won’t work with smaller games. Show gameplay as soon as possible. Don’t rely on cutscenes. Share your knowledge. Be visible. I like Dragon’s Dogma 2’s PR campaign more. It was more conventional
• Stellar Blade has already patched out a controversial phrase (Hard R) and it won’t be in the final release. Yeah, that’s literally 1984. No buy from me, dawg.

And now back to the good stuff.
Digital Foundry says it’s a polished game, has 60 FPS mode, great visual design, and plenty of content. It’s a complete package which is a rare thing these days.

The creator said all the right things like

• Stellar Blade dev, also known for butt-jiggling game Nikke, says he “put special attention” into the female lead’s back because that’s what players see most of the time
• “Honestly, when I play a game I would like to see someone who is better-looking than myself. That’s what I want. I don’t want to see something normal; I want to see something more ideal. I think that is very important in a form of entertainment. This is, after all, entertainment targeted for adults.” (ibid)
• “The game is a virtual reality, and I believe we need to have opportunities to see things not so realistic in the virtual space,” Kim said via an interpreter. “We’re already familiar with reality, we live in it. So when you play a game, I want to be able to see something that’s different from what I experience. There are many things more realistic, and that should also be respected. And I feel games like ‘Stellar Blade’ should exist.”

As for the game’s detractors, when they say that “‘Stellar Blade’ Is a Teenage Boy’s Idea of the Perfect Video Game” you know it’s gonna be juicy.

I’m yet to try it myself and by that I mean watch it on YouTube for I’m not only maidenless but also cashless

Congratulations to Shift Up and fuck off.
DO NOT PREORDER!
Bros, they lied to us.
They promised no censorship but they censored the game, anyway.
Holiday Rabbit and several other suits got censored! CENSORED!!! This is why I’m leaving the left. Lothrop Stoddard – here I come!

Also Dragon’s Dogma 2 seems to be profitable but already lost 90% of its playerbase
Rise of Ronin is in top 3 but seems to be underperforming

I’m gonna stop updating unless something interesting happens for we’ve reached a dead end.
In order to fix vydia we have to get in charge of the industry and start discussing what comes next: what tech to use? How much to spend? What kind of monetization to allow? What stories to tell? How much content to add? List of no-nos and so on.
We need soviets and unions to defend our rights and freedoms against any dictatorship of the financial capital.
But I’m a reclusive dweeb and you don’t even read