Chatterbox: Video Games

I couldn't find the Platinum general thread, so posting this in the next best thing, as Tencent is investing in Platinum and this is a pretty interesting development.

It's not particularly surprising that Platinum would go to them for more cash but I do wonder how this will develop on the publishing front if they're looking to use this as a springboard for self-published games.

Couldn't find a better place to put this, so here:

Bandai Namco filed a trademark for "Mr. Driller: Drill Land" in Europe.

Last year, Bandai Namco filed a trademark for Mr. Driller Encore in Japan among other Encore titles like Klonoa.

For the uninitiated, BN is making an effort to reintroduce some of their older titles. One of these was Katamari Damacy Reroll, which was a remaster of the first Katamari game.

Klonoa Encore trademark filing for Europe when?

NPD: the best selling games in the US in terms of dollar sales for the 2010s were GTAV, every single Call of Duty game, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Minecraft, PS4 best selling console, Dualshock 4 wireless black best selling accessory.

Here's a top 20 from Venture Beat.

I'm going to list it:

1. Grand Theft Auto V
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops
3. Call of Duty: Black Ops II
4. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
5. Call of Duty: Black Ops III
6. Call Of Duty: Ghosts
7. Red Dead Redemption II
8. Call of Duty: WWII
9. Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII
10. Minecraft
11. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
12. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019
13. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
14. Mario Kart 8
15. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
16. Battlefield 1
17. Battlefield 4
18. Destiny
19. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
20. Star Wars Battlefront 2015

Edited by tclittle on Jan 16th 2020 at 6:01:43 AM

Christ. No wonder they make so many CoD games. Guess the people are getting what they want.

It doesn't seem to be slowing down that much either. I can't find the number of copies the last game sold but as far as actual profit Activision says it made them a billion dollars. It also broke multiple records, including having the best launch of any Co D game on PC.

The proof is right there in the list above, the newest installment is number 12 on the list, managing to edge out a game that is basically on every single platform and had a nine year head start, while only being out for two months.

Edited by tclittle on Jan 16th 2020 at 9:58:02 AM

It's telling that Minecraft is only number 10 on that list despite being the absolute best selling game of all time.

Nintendo has won a case against Germany and Norway over their inability to cancel eShop preloads; appeals pending.

Source article (in Norwegian).

A Plague Tale: Innocence went on the Xbox Game Pass for PC users recently, and I need to justify my subscription, so I took the opportunity to install and play it. As an aside, 41 GB is a pretty hefty download for a game whose length is well under 20 hours.

I knew of it mainly by reputation beforehand; the first time I heard of it was from Zero Punctuation, and there've been a few other nibbles at the edges of my awareness since then. Overall impressions are very positive, with a few specific things coming to mind:

• The visual design is brilliant. I know that's kind of like saying water is wet for games these days, but since it's first and foremost an artsy story experience, that's one of its core selling points and it delivers quite well. My one complaint is that the speaking animations don't look very natural. Mouth movements aren't well synced to the dialogue.
• The story is interesting, but ultimately quite predictable. Even if I didn't know the broad strokes, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that you don't start an action-adventure game with an idyllic scene from the life of the teenage daughter of a Serious Hairy Dad without completing fucking her over by the end of the prologue. Nor is it particularly shocking for her sheltered little brother with an unspecified disease to turn out to have weird mystical powers. Nor is it the least bit surprising for their mother to turn up alive. Come on, game, who are you trying to fool with that ages-old trick?
• The character interactions are great. I love the interplay between the medieval Scooby Gang, although the character arcs are a bit short for my liking. The game could have spent more time developing them so that I felt more emotion when horrible things started happening. The "core team" of Amicia, Hugo, and Lucas gets the most depth, which also acts as a clue to where the axe will fall.
  • I was really trying to get invested in shipping the characters, but I guess that wasn't in the cards. Oh, well. I guess it has to count as a positive that it doesn't feel obligated to add a romance arc, nor have its female protagonist be the victim of attempted rape. That's worth a golf clap at the very least.
  • While it's earning points for not sexualizing its characters, it's losing them for having absurdly competent children. I know, I know, it's part of the premise and Willing Suspension of Disbelief is required, but I'm just not sold on a ten year old boy being a master alchemist.
  • I'll admit that it's realistic for Amicia not to be singlehandedly participating in every part of the story, but it doesn't help me get invested in Melie and Arthur as characters for them to be off-screen doing their own things for half the game.
• The game feels a little rushed toward the end. The resolution of Hugo's arc in particular feels about as smooth and natural as a car crash. He's brainwashed by the Inquisition, then he isn't. Then he's leading a rat army to murder everyone bad. Ooookay.
  • The boss fight against Nicholas is possibly one of the worst things ever. It took me ages to even figure out what I was supposed to do.
  • The final battle is a serious case of WTF on toast. I know it's going for maximum Nightmare Fuel there, but hooooooly crap, game.
  • The game plays a dirty trick of hiding the epilogue after half the credits. I almost thought it wasn't going to have a proper ending at all.
  • Unless I missed something, the explanation of exactly what happens, and why, with the Macula and the rats and everything is never actually given. Holding out for a sequel, maybe?
  • Maybe it's for the sake of the audience, but I'm astonished that every single one of those kids isn't a gibbering wreck of PTSD by the end.
• The stealth mechanics aren't bad. That said, they aren't great either. The fact that I can be three quarters of the way through laboriously cleaning out a camp of enemies, then get spotted once and instantly killed, forcing me to restart from a checkpoint ten minutes back, is ... irritating. Teeth clenching, even. It's realistic, I'll grant you, that a teenage girl with a slingshot would stand no chance against an armored soldier (magical sleeping potions aside), but that doesn't stop the frustration.
• The crafting system seems tacked on just to add depth to gameplay. It's not unwelcome per se, but feels obligatory, and causes serious Gameplay and Story Segregation when I'm on a desperate survival mission but go on long diversions to pick up some rope.
• There is one particular scene near the end where Gameplay and Story Integration occurs. It's when Rodric is pushing the cart to provide cover. I died over and over again in an attempt to take down the archers, but it was all but impossible. Incredibly frustrating, even, until I realized that it was the point of the scene. A teenager with a sling really can't fight an entire army.

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 26th 2020 at 1:31:19 PM

Jhony Ljungstedt, now former art director for EA's DICE studio who has been there since Battlefield: Bad Company 2, is joining Nintendo's Retro Studios.

Ars Technica: RIP Stadia? Nvidia’s newly launched cloud-gaming service is (mostly) a stunner

Nvidia should be launching its new streaming game service literally right now, and Ars Technica's review of it says it it's everything that Google Stadia is not. You can play your existing games, from your existing library, without having to buy them again. Performance is mostly excellent, latency is low, and issues appear to be minimal.

Worth noting is that there are some restrictions for free tier players, including 1 hour play session limits and limited graphics options.

Sony shutting down the Playstation.com forums on February 27th.

Can't say I ever used them, but I really hate how social media has a stranglehold on all other forms of interaction on the web...

Why would I use social media when I can just crawl into my trash can and get the same effect?

As a Story of Seasons fan, I feel there are too many shallow Farm Life Sims. If you go onto FOGU forums or the HM/SOS subreddits, you'll frequently come across people advertising their sims.

It's nice that the genre is getting games (ten years ago it wasn't even a genre), but many of the games don't feel like they bring anything new. They have basic character designs and basic characterizations. It just leaves you feeling "Why don't I go play Story of Seasons?".

I hate how dedicated forums are being weaned away. Reddit is a convenient substitute, but smaller dedicated forums are often better for in-depth discussion.

Forums are also small-scale enough to be properly moderated. Social media...isnt.

Edited by SapphireBlue on Feb 20th 2020 at 2:03:50 AM

The thing I like about forums is you get to know other posters somewhat.

Like I could easily recognize a minimum of 20-30 people I see around these forums.

On something like reddit I might know 1 or 2 people in a subreddit if I hang around for a long time, and likely only because they make content like a guide for something or because their posting has some sort of popular meme.

Edited by 32ndfreeze on Feb 20th 2020 at 10:05:00 PM

Forums are a community, social media is yelling into the void and sometimes somebody yells back.

Bigger forums are a community but smaller forums tend to be much closer I've found

If you drop your forums, you don't have to pay the hosting costs or hire community managers and moderators. I'd imagine that's the main draw for them.

Discord is still relevant right?

That should seem like a good platform for hosting forum size community

In my experience Discord isn't as accessible as a regular forum

That’s actually true

I never even heard of Discord until recently.

Bulbagarden is still my favorite forum for Pokemon news. Serebii and the subreddit are much faster, but it always felt like Bulbagarden had better discussions. The only exception is when it comes to manga—no one discusses manga on Bulbagarden (even less so now that the anime and manga sections have been combined), while Serebii has actual manga section (even if it's 96% Pokespe).

Serebii was my first forum years ago, and also more or less my introduction to fandoms. A lot of it was fun, but I was about 11 when I joined and didn’t realize how creepy some of the stuff I saw there was until I was older. I get the feeling it was mostly adults and older teens who forgot that it was a Pokémon forum and there might be actual kids there. That’s not to say that everything was creepy (most of it was just usual online fandom stuff), but there were some disturbingly obsessed fans, and at least a few adults openly and loudly attracted to kid characters (and hopefully that’s as far as it went).

...Sorry if that was too much information. I have no idea what it’s like now, though. Or any time past the mid 2000s. I was mostly just there in middle school.

Edited by SapphireBlue on Feb 20th 2020 at 7:03:54 AM

Hey, that was my first forum too!

I don't think I noticed any of the skeevy stuff though.

It was however my very first experience with fanfiction. I remember reading the Sevii Island Saga and the Retelling of Pokémon Colloseum after clicking on links in posters signitures.