i once put this idea past someone in a game design course and they were distressed that it would take away time from learning Unreal 5.
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like, my hypothetical game course would be
101: making games
start with pong and work our way to making breakout, space invaders, and then a game a week.
102: making levels
use existing level design tools. Starting with Super Mario Bros remastered, then Doom, Quake, Tomb Raider. And working out way up in complexity
idk thatās as far as Iāve gotten
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i actually use mega man maker, then trenchbroom (quake), then ??? (studentās choice) in my class. i wish i could split the class across two semesters so i could go into like racing games and rpg towns and so on. Iām thinking this year i might make a simple character controller (maybe a roller ball?) in Godot then get them to use whatever they like to make a simple explorative lev (read: walking sim). the important thing is that they donāt do any programming.
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OG Tomb Raider is definitely worth playing today especially if you never got far into it before. The controls become second nature pretty quickly and there is a tutorial stage separate from the actual game where you can practice each move safely.
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I tried playing Neon White (which I must say in a Bob Ross voice with an exaggerated āhā in āwhiteā).
It didnāt do much for me mechanically and I donāt think a gameās presentation has repulsed me so hard in a while. What a waste of Steve Blum, I thought his voice could save just about anything for me but no, they gave him a terrible script to work with
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I honestly think the tomb raider 4/5 engine trle uses is still a great base for a platformer. the controls are tough by a modern standard but you canāt beat how good those games feel to move around in still. itās funny how 90% of good trle custom maps beat everything weāve gotten out of the franchise since angel of darkness easily
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Played through the last 2 worlds and castle in Super Mario Wonder two player.
This game feels pretty good. Its somehow floatie AND tight. The wonder seeds / false exits aspect of the levels was pretty nice. I liked the lack of character collisions. The level design was thoughtful and streamlined. We died fairly little for it being the end of a mario game. In the end we went up 8 lives and down 11 over the course of playing it without ever seeking out coins or lives. Never felt like we had to lock in super hard.
The theming and characters were cute, fine ok. The super power badges were petty fun and a great way to make your own challenge. The grappling hook vine was really great imo. One of the secret wonder seeds was pretty obscure but we found it with the secrets badge.
This felt like a real evolution from the New SuperMario Bros. era. The game felt purposeful, well tuned, cohesive and focused. I think the music was pretty good but I cant recall any of it.
It was a fun evening. I felt compelled to finish it.
Would I pay full price for it? Nah. I never need to play this again.
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the Knytt Stories editor is still my favorite tool i made students use. thereās like a billion different tilesets in it and they came up with really cool stuff - honestly better than other stuff they made elsewhere. iām convinced that using limited tools like that is a hack to getting students to be more imaginative that tools like Unity or Unreal otherwise suppress. the flipside is you do get a lot of students will be mad theyāre not learning contemporary tools. and Knytt Stories was horrible to try and run on anything but Windows.
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Glad I finished Still Wakes The Deep. My first two sessions I was just annoyed. They made a big ole real Oil Rig in Unreal then littered it with garbage to make sure it was a video game level at all times. Maybe a problem with my eye-sight and 1080p TV but I couldnāt tell what I was looking at half the time. There is a difference between āWhat is that THING?ā and āwhat is that thing?ā I also donāt like Amnesia monsters. I only bought it for the oil rig and that it was Scottish.
This game holds the record for most utterances of āJesusā in a video game.
Being an electrician is mostly about using a flat head screwdriver to open up a yellow painted vent. Or using the screwdriver to break open a pad lock.
It took about 4 hours and I actually liked the predictable ending more than expected. It never explains what exactly happened which is good.
Seeing it was on PS Plus Buffet made me go ādang itā could have saved myself money and tried some other garbage. But I did support the Scottish Arts.
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Iā¦have to say I disagree with this. I bought the game after seeing the game dev best of list because itās 100% the kind of game my wife likes playing. she started it last night and I felt like it seems pretty competently translated? localized, even? maybe my brain is too game-saturated to notice, but I asked my wife this morning and she said so far she likes the translation. maybe itās better in Japanese, though.
I hate contradicting what Tuxedo is saying, though, so my reccomendation - spoil a little of the game for yourself and watch a playthrough or something and see what you think.
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somehow playing games that are not for the telephone
Alice Madness Returns - this is a really good game when itās busy being about cool 3D platforming and Alice being damaged by the people and world around her and not very good when it asks you to engage in combat against your demons
also playing through it in 2025 and observing the multitude of mechanics, the fluidity through which it keeps jumping to them and the presentation and pacing of the story, Iām pretty certain American McGee seeded a decent chunk of the Shanghai dev scene and thereās a straight line between Doom and Quake and Genshin and other modern AAA Chinese phone games
and I donāt know how to feel about that other than Iām glad they learned from someone who gave a shit
Onirism - okay I bought this when it was in early access and decided āIāll wait until it hits 1.0ā and it hit 1.0 and the online play wasnāt implemented so I went āIām going wait until they put in the online play because they stole CoD zombies and stuck it in their game and I want to play that with other likeminded sickosā and Iāve been watching the patch notes and also juggling storage because Unity is a very good engine and requires 35-40gb of free space to patch (okay this is also maybe Steamās fault)
anyway online still isnāt in but I saw in one of the patch notes that the last chunk of the campaign was added, which is weird because itās been out of EA for 2 months but what the hell do I know about game dev
anyway, picking up from my previous comment of
it is still a PS2-core ass video game made by sickos who played too many video games in the golden age of the 00s, when video games were more widely jank. now that Iāve got anotherā¦ god, 12-14 hours? into the campaign, they are not shy about anything. these French peoples have played too many games. a chunk of one level is Dam from GoldenEye. you can buy Carol skins that make her look like Doomguy, either Fio or Eri from Metal Slug or the MK ninjas, on top of all the regular thematic skins. I hit one level and the game literally dumped 10 deadass Splatoon weapons in the shop. an entire level is literally You Are Playing A Star Wars Battlefront (2004) Match, the whole thing, you capture points, destroy shield generators and fly a plane up and blow up a spaceship. there is even a god awful, absolute dogshit instant-fail stealth section with questionable enemy vision that you can easily cheese when you reject the notion of stealth and embrace murder, possibly one of the worst such sections I have played in any game. all of your favorite tropes of the aughts, theyāre here baby
Iām like a pig in mud
the levels are big. huge. maybe even too big. there are times where you simply do not know where to go because things are not clearly signposted or the levels arenāt linear but are rather huge open zones and hey, you know what, I dig it. itās fun to not know what the hell Iām doing sometimes adn accidentally go off on a tangent and find a boss or secret thatās completely skippable. thatās cool. also I appreciate the Carol is a ten year old girl whoās first solution to every problem is violence, to the point where she revels in it. as an idiot playing video games, finally, a character who understands my thought process
Iāve also spent a bunch of time seeing bits and bobs and going āhey they took this from Serious Sam 2 and specifically Serious Sam 2ā, which may be recency bias (I replayed SS2 this year, but before it got itās out-of-nowhere 20th anniversary patch, which means I might play it again because hey that last level has a par time of an hour and thatās funny), but then I was popking around and thereās an actual goddamn bundle on Steam thatās Onirism and Serious Sam 2 and hey, I canāt argue with Croteam going āhey check this game inspired by our most divisive entryā
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No worries!
Iāll elaborate. I didnāt have issues at first either because the critical path is fine, and there does seem to be a human translator with a voice involved.
The problem is specific to the investigation and especially the message board, which seem way more rushed.
I played the game a bit more to find three examples
Ā« Dark tourism Ā» should have been translated as Ā« occult tourism Ā» to use the same terminology as two sentences ago here. Itās very confusing to have two terms for obviously the same concept. Thatās the lack of cohesion I was referring to.
What, does she not know what qualify means?
Literally no purpose to this dialogue in English
Itād all be fine in any other genre but a VN must have a near perfect translation or this kind of error really adds up.
I kept checking the time, removing hair from my carpet, checking SB, etc instead of playing when in front of the screen
Oh Iāve tried the french translation and itās worse
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After likeā¦ 8 years or something I have completed Saejimaās chapter in Yakuza 5. What a slog.
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My extra lives reset when I switch off Mario Galaxy, but thereās no problem money canāt solve.
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True, but at the same time itās incredibly hard even for a perfectly competent translator to maintain a high quality standard throughout a whole VN because thereās so much text.
At some point ālabor of loveā turns into āfuck, Iāve been translating at a snailās pace puzzling over every detail of this filler dialogue, gotta go faster to hit the deadlineā
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I started playing Final Fantasy 14 with one of the lads from work. Iāve never played a proper āmmorpgā before that wasnāt completely dead before, like exploring old granado espada realms or whatever. So itās exciting.
allegedly the australian servers are way more quiet than any other place in the world but i still had to wait in a queue to log in? I get double xp points to make up for this Problem
I spent half an hour figuring out how to walk forward before realising the dualshock in my lounge room had connected and was making me stand still in front of the tutorial guy. It was another hour or so before a level 100 bunny woman told me how to run around as opposed to walking. Thank you Mel if youāre out there and read Selectbutton.
Old mate told me that thereās a mahjong parlour in this game, so Iām afraid once I get there that thatāll be it for āRaidingā āHotbarsā āQueue Popā and stuff like that which people talk about in the public chat. Much to learn
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Also i like that the ps3 release was so bad that they show it getting blown up in the opening movie
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so cool to be able to take part in your own games apocalypse
i know it wasnt her bc bunnygirl/datacenter but one of the most active and helpful people in our FC goes by mel so thats cute
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Finished day 1 in Disco Elysium.
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Beat vanilla Starcraft campaign. Still an all-timer! Terran themes are among the most iconic music in games to me. I love that Jim Raynor falls in love with a girl he knows for all of like three missions and as a result ends up just kinda being stuck in the middle with all the horseshit space opera nonsense that follows her around; deeply funny characterization.
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