It's good.

The more I play of Ghost of Yotei, the more convinced I am that the intention was to gatekeep open world activities until tutorialised by main quests, and it ultimately just didnt come together somewhere along the line. I wonder if thats why the marketing campaign was kinda late and very lite.

Dick Cheney lived a long, fulfilling, wealthy life, mastered his career, nurtured a family, and died in his elderly years. He did all this without ever having been made accountable for the scores of lives ended or irreversibly ruined, and generational damage to the Arab world. No justice was served.

Appeal failed. I get it, it's technically a breach. I just don't think a week ban is proportional to the breach, in consideration of the source of the issue; BF6 unexpectedly using my Steam name, and not my EA account name, which had been changed to meet the ToS, and was reflected in BF2042.

In a couple of years I'd like to see a retrospective dissect games that benefited most from revitalising post-launch updates that, in some cases, were transformative in improving overall quality and appeal. Unpack why this is happening, insight from development teams, and how to avoid it.

Still chipping away at Ghost of Yotei and the more I comb over it the firmer I am cemented in my feelings that the narrative is a complete misfire. Strong foundational ideas that are disappointingly misaligned with the 'video game' part of this whole thing. Frustratingly safe in execution.

Come the fuck on.

A reminder that you don't need to understand everything you see

Every once in awhile there comes along a creative work that so perfectly scratches my itch I cannot fault it in any conceivable way. This is exactly my shit. www.youtube.com/watch?v=htQB...

me after ROSALÍA - Berghain (Official Video) feat. Björk & Yves Tumor

some might say it's too early to say and i have no evidence to back me up and that might be true but i think the verdict is in; the switch 2 has failed

I wrote and deleted a very long series of rants on my frustrations with fatalism and fatalist thinking, as an an antithesis to collective problem solving, corrosive to resistance against tyranny, and how it arrogantly costs us all, but particularly younger generations, a future they deserve.

It's such a small thing, but super disappointed to see Battlefield 6 adopt the Call of Duty "real time countdown" XP boost model, where the boost timer does calculate practical in-match game time but just a universal clock. Activate the 60min timer and something comes up? Too bad so sad.

I am normally pretty fucking chill about stupid ass online personalities and whatever people want to post, but every now and then there comes poster on a forum or social media pisses me the fuck off just existing.

Maybe it's an old-man-yells-at-clouds thing, but I think any Alien narrative that permits softening/control of, or unspoken cooperation with the Alien itself, misses a fundamental tenant of the Alien's identity, that is representing the absolute consequence of delusions of grandeur and greed.

Gave The Legend of Khiimori demo a whirl and there's good potential in there. Khiimori is cantered around a 13th century Mongolian courier, with Death Stranding adjacent open emphasis on open world exploration, with topographical and terrain mastery via the horse, and equipment management.

Weekend was completely skewered by illness. I've got a long week of conferences and other running around ahead (starting with a very busy Monday), so I really, REALLY wanted to use this weekend to completely zen out. Sink into and hopefully finish Ghost of Yotei. See Frankenstein at the cinema. Nup.

Nevermind. As @docseuss.bsky.social so politely informed me, he referred to the tattoo as "My totenkopf tattoo" so errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, awkward. At least this thread serves as an alternative reminder of what it means to be "uninformed".

I know people are clowning on that dude for allegedly not recognising the SS Totenkopf but I also implore people to get offline, interact with the real world, and maybe learn to recognise how uneducated, uninformed, or simply reasonably, justifiably unknowing many people are about specific shit.

Fart is making a comeback — as a shit

Battlefield 6's client/server hit reg tool is really wonderful and disheartening at the same time. Sucks seeing it not always match 1:1.

I think most of the visual issues with UE5 games comes down to the engine being, in principle, a future engine solving complex problems but maybe a generation early. UE5's whole wheelhouse is providing software rendering solutions to accomplish extremely high detail and accuracy, at a huge cost.

Sometimes you just gotta have a burger.

One of my favourite games.

Unpopular opinion maybe but I thought the premium passes for Battlefield 3, 4, and 1 were completely justifiable and worth their investment, and are absolutely fair and reasonable to offer your audience. All three games delivered on their "premium pass" content via sizable post launch packs.

Im so excited for Frankestein. Westgarth is doing a screening on the weekend.

Nine years is a long career, but I imagine Firebreak's market failure was the trigger for this, and while it was a flat idea from the getgo, I will say again what I've said a lot recently: I am very worried about Remedy.

Thinkin' bout the golden age of mods and how if you weren't there during the boom you really missed an incredible culture of art and community driven creativity that the medium hasn't replicated since. The absence, if dwelled on, is honestly guttural in grief for what was lost.

8.1%. Get on the objectives you cowards.

As recommended by @dachsjaeger.bsky.social, dropping texture quality from Overkill to Ultra completely fixed the issue. Observing VRAM usage with everything else maxed out, the difference is astronomical. Overkill will eat up nearly 15GB VRAM, Ultra couldn't crack 10GB.

I unironically miss Miiverse.

I'm not an expert but I think Battlefield 6 has a VRAM allocation or flushing problem. I've noticed, since launch, pretty overt performance deterioration between matches. First match is silky smooth 90 - 100fps. Second match drops to ~60fps. Dips as low as 45fps.

Ghost of Yotei's hard mode is completely mistuned, in my opinion. It is an enormous leap in difficulty over normal, and the perfect parry window, alongside attack telegraphing, is fucking absurdly small. It is objectively harder than Tsushima for no real reason.

Still enjoying Ghost of Yotei plenty but I am ready for more interesting narrative structure in open world games. I said it not too long ago, but I still think CDPR, while not reinventing the wheel, remain basically top class for, at least, open world narrative conceptualisation.

I resent and firmly reject any argument that tries to reframe VtM: Bloodlines' acclaim and legacy as just because it has great characters and a fun negative. It's revisionist to highlight the weaker aspects of the gameplay and try to paint the entire interactive experience as a failure.

Early impressions of ARC Raiders are thus; extremely sick vibes and clearly made with a lot of love. This could be really good shit.

I think the narrative of Ghost of Yotei suffers the Mass Effect 2 problem, where like BioWare initially aiming for a very open, non-linear experience, I too think Sucker Punch wanted to balance open agency with character development, and ultimately had to reign a bunch in.

Gonna be honest, while I understand and appreciate the subjective disdain for the grotesquery and associated representation of childhood sexual assault, the vocal rejection on Era in response to the Abstract Daddy 'figurine' is weirdly a gross, judgemental puratism, in my opinion. It's not pretty.

Can't wait for Bloodlines 2 to drop and I become the most whiny, obnoxious version of myself for a good few weeks.

very disappointed the pokemon games leak doesn't including a pokemon themed spiritual trilogy finality to kane & lynch

We've already got to the "why can't I solo tanks as a single engineer" complaints for Battlefield 6. The series is always at its worst when it panders to one-man-army players. Keep tanks tough!

"Battlefield is back!" they scream, even though Battlefield 6 is heavier, crunchier, and more infantry focused than ever before, and absolutely feels nothing even remotely like Battlefield 4. It has none of the openness or fluidity of BF4's highs.

hell yeab

Genocidal corporate ties aside; speaking exclusively on video games, Microsoft's handling of Halo post-Bungie is head spinning. How they have consistently dropped the ball is absolutely beyond me. It's fucking Halo. I really don't think Microsoft have had any idea what they wanted it to be.

I recall many moons ago when folk were pondering future settings and a lead dev, Désilets I think it was, said their vision was to always err on historic time periods that are unexpected and uncommon in the medium. And it was in part in response to people clamouring for a Samurai Assassin's Creed.