Games

Jebus, it's a freaking bloodbath for the gaming industry.

TL;DR: Still in development, but Stardew Valley v1.6 took most of his time.

This is so stupid. Can't wait for it.

Wasn't the biggest fan of the game but still sad to see another developer studio go down.

Today's game is Portal 1. I didn't really have time to start the Hospital in Silent Hill 2's New Game+, but i wanted to play something. So i downloaded Portal 1 and played through a few of the challenge maps for the Gold Medals. I've been meaning to get the achievements out of the way at some point anyways. I got Gold in 5/6 of the Portal Count categories, but stopped at the last one. This screenshot comes from my 2 portal run of one of the chambers. It was difficult because i had to bounce the pellets of the cube at just the right angle to get it into the receiver.

This one i took right before a failed run where i had to portal peek. Luckily i saved right before dying, but it was harder than i thought, especially because i got turned around.

There was also the Test Chamber with the turrets. It was hard and i had to save scum it. I ended up using cubes to shove them over and the running back into cover before they could get me. I also built this fun staircase of Cubes to get over a wall. I ended the run with two portals just to get through a mesh fence.

Get To Work is a tongue-in-cheek game about climbing the corporate ladder. But it's more metaphorical than literal, as you spend the game on your hands and knees, rollerblading your way up difficult obstacles (and falling back to the ground level) just for the slightest recognition in the workforce.

It's one of those climbing games, like Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, or Only UP!, or A Difficult Game About Climbing, except you're on rollerblades instead of climbing with your own two hands. This game just released two days ago, so it's very new.

I like the title screen of this game. It's designed to look like a business magazine, while showing off the main character and your game options. Your character reminds me of the political activist Charlie Kirk, with his tiny face on a large head.

I also love the article call-out for Sam Bankman-Fried. In case you're not familiar, he was considered the poster boy for all things crypto, having founded FTX cryptocurrency exchange. That is, until FTX went bankrupt and he was arrested and charged for fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering. As of this year, he's serving 25 years in prison and was forced to pay back $11 billion.

Get To Work opens in your bedroom, with you staring at a poster encouraging you to climb that corporate ladder. So you set off, with rollerblades on your hands, feet, knees, and elbows. There is no walking or standing in this game; you rollerblade everywhere.

You reach your first room of obstacles, with the goal being to show up for your first interview. You may notice that there's a clock in the top left corner, giving you a subtle tracker for how long you struggle throughout this game.

A narrator explains the jist of this game for you, essentially claiming that NFTs were more far-fetched than a game about rollerblading up the corporate ladder. If you can't read the narration subtitles at the bottom of this screenshot, open the image in a new window to see its full 4K resolution.

Hidden around each room are these spinning logos for The Grindset, a podcast about business. They have short (usually funny) discussions about corporate life and what you need to know to succeed in today's work climate. As if the climb wasn't hard enough, most of them are in hard-to-reach areas. But there are three achievements for collecting these, so grab every one you can find!

Here's an excerpt of unprompted narration. It sounds silly and preposterous, but is also real in America and kind of sad. Two of my close friends are in this exact situation right now, having spent the past year job-hunting and still not having any luck being seriously considered. And one of them has a Harvard degree!

I'm almost to the interview...

You finally get to your first interview, only to find that it's not going to be that easy. We've gone so far metaphorical now, it's wrapping back around to literal!

You finally get an offer letter!

...Only to be rejected and fall all the way back to the start.

Thankfully, you have a family member who can hook you up with a warehouse job in the meantime. So you set out again to climb a new corporate ladder.

The game starts to get really sassy at this point. I got stuck in this room for about an hour, and the more I fell to the ground, the more the narrator had to say about it.

Eventually, the game gave me a GIVE UP button to press, for when I'm "feeling like this game is too much and it's time to give up." They also started mentioning shoes a lot, claiming it would probably be in my best interest to buy a pair and just walk my way to the top instead.

I finally made it to my first pay raise! ...Only to learn it wasn't feasible at this time and instead I received a pizza party. Goddamn, that's too real. But at least there's a manager role that I can promote to, so I'm not done yet, right? RIGHT?

I finally made it to the promotion to manager! Woo!

Only to have a brick wall literally pop up in my face, proclaiming that a college degree is required. Which I apparently don't have.

This was the first time my character seemed to be in real despair. Normally if he fell, he'd immediately pop back up and be ready to go. But after this one, he just lied there, unmoving. I had to jiggle the controls to get him back up.

There was a hallway off to one side that led to an unpaid internship, the only option left for a warehouse worker with no degree. Sigh.

After climbing this next room of obstacles and getting accepted for the unpaid internship, I finally had to call it a night. This humor in this game was starting to get too real and painful. And I spent an hour and a half just to get this far! You will eventually work your way up to CEO before the game ends, so I still have a long way to go.

By the way, I couldn't resist making this. 🤣

Nothing more disappointing to me than seeing a game I might enjoy... and then it's only available on PC on Epic Games store. Why can't it be available on Epic, Xbox game store and Steam? It's so annoying, like you have no choice but to use Epic... which I would literally do ANYTHING not to use.

I love my favorite games and have been playing them for years, but I disliked about 99% of the games I played.

I don't think I have FoMO or anything; I just find it weird because my taste in music, film, or art/media in general is usually fairly broad. I guess I just wonder why my taste in games is aggressively limited.

It's not for the lack of trying new games; I've tried more or less anything I could find, sometimes because it's popular, other times because it looked interesting, but nothing really hits the mark like my favorite games.

I just don't like what most developers create, I guess?

I'm hoping, by posting this, maybe I can find others who are having a similar experience, and we can share thoughts.

Another one bites the dust. I'm sure I'd enjoy it if I could have bought a copy and hosted the servers myself.

Confirmed

https://twitter.com/PixelsofMark/status/1864090964748321266

My research and AI's responses seem inconsistent or unsatisfactory, so I prefer to ask these questions to Xbox players, thanks to anyone who takes the time to respond!

1. Are the games actually emulated or are they just downloaded digitally using the disc as a key?
2. Does the compatibility transform games significantly or is it a remaster-like optimization?
3. Is it possible to use this feature offline therefore not caring about any Microsoft server support cessation?
4. Are there significant differences in how backward-compatibility works on Xbox One versus Xbox Series X?
5. What are some other aspects of this backwards compatibility feature that are worth mentioning?

My pick is Psyonix, the team behind the one and only Rocket League.

And why they're my pick is because they've been prioritizing elitist gamers over generally everyone of all skill levels. This is evident when you are penalized for leaving matches in Casual Mode that escalates from 5 minutes to even hours. Basically limiting and restricting your playtime on a game people had once paid for.

And I say once paid for because this game once had a price tag along with DLCs. Sometime a few years ago, Psyonix sold itself to Epic Games and flipped Rocket League to Free-to-Play or Freemium. They delisted the game from Steam and unless you had been accumulating anything before the delisting, you are SOL.

In the Epic Games version of Rocket League, you have to build back up everything that was once readily available when it was on Steam. Having to pick up common body parts, having to pick up decals, flags, wheels .etc

All of these are just one continual dump after another from Psyonix on the fans that truly are there to have a fun time and not be a foaming drooling tryhard of an elitist player.

All (action)games I know of don't have real and proper surface collision detection, except some physics games. Just an example: If my Char hits something or someone the weapon goes straight through without any physical reaction, it just counts the damage I've done. Are there any games out there, in which physics are calculated correctly and taken into visual account?!

LocoCycle, despite its appearance, is not actually a racing game, but an action/adventure fighting game that happens to take place on the open road.

LocoCycle opens with a live action B-movie cinematic. We get a few of these cinematic cutscenes throughout the game. We see important military leaders from China, Russia, Africa, and America, along with a ton of other guests in elegant formal wear, gathering at a secret formal event in Nicaragua. It's a gallery held by the arms dealer Big Arms, to show off two new motorcycles: the sentient combat bikes S.P.I.K.E. and I.R.I.S., with advanced AI and powerful weaponry. The bikes will be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Yes, that is James Gunn in the background. He plays the host of this event, showing off the two bikes. The girl in blue (Lisa Foiles) actually performed the AI voice for I.R.I.S., and S.P.I.K.E. was voiced by Robert Patrick, the guy who played the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

A thunderstorm starts brewing and the party is moved indoors. Some armed guards are asked to move the bikes to the garage, but while one steps away to take a call, I.R.I.S. is hit by lightning!

We're then introduced to I.R.I.S.' mechanic, Pablo, who is asked to repair her. Her circuitry is fried and she needs to be fixed up before the auction begins. Pablo only speaks Spanish throughout the entire game, which makes it impossible for him to communicate with I.R.I.S., whose database of 5,000 languages is now corrupted. If you don't know Spanish, make sure you turn on subtitles!

While Pablo is fixing her up, I.R.I.S. scans the magazine he was reading, then watches a commercial on the nearby TV about a Freedom Rally being held at the fairgrounds in Scottsburg, Indiana. She's inspired by the ad's tagline: "Live Free. Ride Alive."

She decides she needs to find this rally in Scottsburg, IN and she invites Pablo to tag along. Problem is, Pablo's pant leg is caught on I.R.I.S.' rear wheel frame. When she takes off, he finds himself dragged along!

The rest of the game is I.R.I.S. racing to find Scottsburg, IN while dragging Pablo on the pavement behind her. That trip is over 3,000 miles long! I hope Pablo is wearing some durable britches.

I.R.I.S. breaks out of the Big Arms facility and is quickly pursued by men in black suits and heavy firearms.

You'll quickly notice that I.R.I.S. drives on her own, and you only control her other functions. You can steer her back and forth, attack with front or rear wheels (Pablo himself usually being the rear-wheel attack), shoot unlimited rounds from her forward guns, and boost forward for a limited time.

Despite occasionally aiding I.R.I.S. in combat, Pablo insists that he's being dragged along against his will. He begs for help from anyone who comes after them, but is mostly ignored as they do everything they can to take down I.R.I.S.

There are several types of enemies you'll encounter. The armed men in black being the most prevalent, but there are also guys with jet packs, helicopters, and even rocket launchers. I.R.I.S. can counter all their attacks with quick-time events, including throwing rockets back at their launcher.

S.P.I.K.E. himself will come for I.R.I.S., but she refuses to go home with him. So he resolves to take her out and you get a boss fight with him.

When S.P.I.K.E. realizes that Pablo is a "powerful human ally" in I.R.I.S.' escape, he decides to get his own human companion. He grabs the first lady he finds at a campground, who willingly goes along with him despite being dragged on her back for miles of gravel and pavement.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure I.R.I.S. is just holding onto Pablo; he's not actually stuck. Because she can throw him like a ninja star to attack ranged enemies! He always boomerangs back to her and ends up with his pant leg "stuck" on her again.

Because I.R.I.S. is technically malfunctioning, there are times when she might shut down completely and stop in the middle of the road. Then Pablo has a limited amount of time to fix her up before a pursuing semi truck catches up and runs them both over.

It's a little tricky moving Pablo around until he finds problems to fix, but the various fixes themselves are relatively easy to complete.

This is an extremely campy and silly game, but very fun to play! Combat is mostly button-mashing and swerving around obstacles on the road, with some quick-time events to either counter an attack or dodge an obstacle. There are three skill trees to improve I.R.I.S. and Pablo's abilities, and the more stuff you unlock, the easier the game becomes. The whole game is 5 levels with 3 missions per level, plus a final boss fight level. You could probably beat the whole thing in a few hours of gameplay.

Here's a shot of S.P.I.K.E. eating a sweet corn and black raspberry buttermilk ice cream cone: