Computerchairgeneral

It's a shame, but this is probably the best response any of the 2023 Hugo winners can give at this point. Still, I can only imagine the emotional roller coaster of winning a Hugo and then watching this entire train wreck unfold.

Thirty hours into Yakuza: Like A Dragon. Main story has started to ramp up, but I keep getting distracted by the business management mini-game and the kart-racing minigame that I just discovered while wandering around the map. It never ceases to amaze me just how dense these games are and just how many side activities they managed to pack into one game.

This is what happens when you wish for the resurrection of a beloved IP. Another finger on the monkey's paw curls. The idea of a Crazy Taxi live service game is weird enough, but it's just bizarre that they are using Fortnight as a major inspiration for the Jet Set Radio reboot. I guess at the very least we are getting proper remakes of these games alongside the live service reboots. It will be interesting to see how the games do head to head, especially with the difficulties live service games have been having lately.

It's a shame that people are being laid off, especially when it seems like it's retaliation for complaining about working conditions. Still, I don't think I'd ever be able to buy anything from ZA/UM after they kicked most of the creators out of the company and took control of the IP.

Good. I'm sure the chatbot will be back up and running soon, but anything that reminds companies there are risks to replacing humans with "AI-enhanced" chatbots is good. Unfortunately, I'm sure the lesson companies are going to take away from this is to include a disclaimer that the chatbot isn't always correct. Which kind of defeats the whole point of using a chatbot to me. Why would I want to use something to try and solve a problem that you just told me could give me inaccurate information?

You know if anyone needs to be let go maybe it's the management who were spending like there was no tomorrow and are now throwing everyone overboard to stop the ship from sinking. Or, you know, just keep cancelling games and shuttering studios. I'm sure that'll work out eventually.

It's crazy how far micro-transactions and monetizing games have come since Bethesda charged $2.50 for cosmetic armor to put on your horse. If you'd told someone back then that one day an in-game mount would cost more than the game itself they would have laughed you out of the room.

Always impressed by the lengths people will go to preserve game history and more than a little concerned about them getting cease-and-desisted by Nintendo. At least it looks like it's already on the Internet Archive, so that's good.

Back to Yakuza: Like A Dragon after a week of playing steam demos from the Next Fest. I was surprised at just how many I ended up enjoying. Crypt Custodian is a neat little metroidvania about a cat sentenced to be the underworld's janitor. Nice art style, sense of humor, and good puzzles. Cryptmaster is a typing-based dungeon crawler where every enemy you defeat gives you letters that you use to spell out the names of the skills you use in combat. It's certainly an inventive take and I'm looking forward to the release. Surprisingly, my favorite demo ended up being for a platformer called Happy! the Hippo. It's based on janky PS2-era platformers like Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly. The game is purpose built for you to pull off those kind of tricks where you skip chunks of the level or even break outside the bounds of the game entirely. It's really fun to play, but what I'm really enjoying about the game is the weird, almost horror game stuff that shows up the longer you play. It feels like an ARG game in a way, like Crow 64 if anyone remembers that. Or something like Shipwreck 64, a game that is a platformer on the surface but is actually a horror game once you get in far enough. Except Happy! the Hippo never turns into a horror game. At least not in the demo. There's plenty of strange stuff the more you explore, but it never descends into an outright horror game. It feels like all the talk about how old 3D platformers could be unsettling and odd was a major inspiration for the game. Hoping the finished the game keeps that tone when it releases.

It's kind of crazy thinking about how all these countries that we think of as so different in culture, religion, etc. used to be part of one state. Obviously levels of control varied, but by this map you could travel from the Atlantic to the shores of the Caspian Sea and never leave Roman territory. But yeah I'd give a reformed Roman Empire ten minutes before we ended up with a Crisis of the Twenty-First Century.

Seven years feels about right for a length between consoles. I am curious to see what they do with it. It's hard to see Nintendo not sticking with the handheld console approach with the Switch 2, but just building a more powerful Switch doesn't feel very Nintendo, if that makes sense. Like there has to be some feature or gimmick to set it apart from the Switch.

They're charging people higher prices and refusing to allow them to keep their digital content? They're basically just handing out the pirate hats and eye patches at this point.