/games/ - Games

half life 2 and deus ex

>>47381
>And the souls likes as well, with tons of content being hidden by obscure choices
Thats not pretentious though, thats trying to make use of its multiplayer system. Its hidden only if you play single player (in itself a bad design choice imho, but thats a different conversation).
I would say pretentious games are the ones who are pretending to be something they are not (duh). Like already mentioned David Cage games want to be a though provoking experiences with innovative gameplay, but instead end up a video game versions of Neil Breen movie. Or FPS games which advetise themselves hardcore old school boomer shooters, but have very superficial understanding of those games, and instead you get generic Painkiller clone with not enough pixels.

>>47376
Undertale and (Almost) every game Sony published since The Last of Us.

Portal 2.

Portal had an ominous atmosphere with Aperture Science largely being a mystery, with it being uncertain whether they were as unethical as the test chambers would suggest or whether it's a result of GlaDOS taking over.
Portal 2 completely destroys that mystery by repeatedly insisting upon itself that Aperture Science was extremely unethical.. but only out of stupidity, then Valve makes Aperture Science a self-insert for their 9001 VR tech demos.

I get they weren't going to get through a much longer game without some kind of story that elaborates on Aperture Science, but the writers made every single aspect of Aperture Science goofy and wacky and lol robots ftw.

And then they had the barefaced cheek, the fucking bollocks, to complain that "the cake is a lie" was overdone, unfunny and had to be excluded from their wackiness.

>>47382
half life 2 no, but definitely the episodes and alyx

>>47387
Creative Limitation

>>47387
Because nobody making them gives a fuck

>>41197
Great minds think alike, I built a tower to the height limit as an extension in mine

I was playing a desert run. Ocean level at 1 with desert set as the only biome. It was fucking brutal and I was scared of losing everything when I die. After several days, I came across a village that had saplings and well…

proof of concept: it is possible to turn an entire village into a single building using walls

>>41398
I liked this concept so much that I expanded on it. Here is the finished build

>>41200
activate windows go to settings to activate windows

I think Cyberpunk 2077 looks better at day than it does at night

there's a LUT mod for cyberpunk 2077 or whatever that lets you tone down saturation which makes it look a lot like your third image and less like los angeles. in fact cyberpunk 2077 is hands down the best rendering of a cyberpunk city ever made for a video game, too bad the game itself is so fucking shit.

Cloudpunk is really the only game i've seen capture cyberpunk urban sprawl/arcology at anywhere near the correct scale. The sequel is going to be a lifesim, and largely ditch the voxel graphics, so it could either turn out great or completely disappointing in that aspect.

>>47361
pure kino

low bit depth retro colour palette in this game, very grey and concrete levels but they also had these sunny dirty grassy areas in syndicate (1993), doesn't have the neon design and 3d lighting aesthetic of cloudpunk.

of the devil

Detective visual novel set in cyberpunk future.

its not chudded out like Val-hall-a and gameplay mechanics are pretty good. p sure the author is lefty sympathetic bc they explicitly mention gentrification, neoliberalism, anarchists, communists, and the whole cyberpunk shebang in the lore tidbits that integrate with the story. No the plot is not some revolutionary but a criminal(youll find out when you go through it what type of criminal she is) who masquerades as a lawyer. also i love the art style. spritzes(light mist) you with common themes in cyberpunk and sci-fi like autonomy of inorganic(read AI/clankers) beings, gender, and stuff and of course capitalism but it doesnt really distract from the game or the characters itself. i think its the brain fog or maybe im just stupid but its quite a brain teaser if you cant remember details that well.

>>47370
oops forgot to write the rest.

like when you do make mistakes, its like oh duh of course. that makes sense. Logically sound. You cant really fail the lawyer sequences unless you run out of chips, which serves as the currency/pseudo-health bar which is pretty neat just typing it out. The main way of gaining chips is by selecting the correct dialogue chains and you can gamble them in key moments to up your chips even more.

Although I myself do not mind this, characters are written to be more contemporary and thus in line with fandom culture. You wont get a lot of depth from each character as it is drip-fed and often played for jokes/funny moments. But they are enjoyable characters to get you through the story. Although ive never played the game, its supposedly inspired by Phoenix Wright with zany characters you slowly unravel that has been satisfying for all three cases(there are going to be 5 in total but only the first two have been released as the prologue does not "count" as a case) .Cases are usually murder cases but the world itself is the character as various people in the world and their roles, beliefs, motivations, and political views unravel and entangle themselves neatly as each case progresses. Exchanges of dialogue centered around determining if the cybernetic of a working class mechanic was utilized for self-expression or if it was because it was produced by companies as necessary for on the site jobs are key moments in the trials, and the neat part is either scenario could be plausible so you have to really think before you lay down you cards.

the music is mostly open source but they made sure to emphasize their game is indie and individually produced. Not like multi-millionaire company produces indie aesthetic, but small team of friends producing bits and pieces of the game. There are original soundtracks composed for the game. If you're not familiar with Visual novel games, this would definitely be a linear visual novel with variants of static images for different character emotions and 3D rendered environments for that cyberpunk flare with neon colors. personally all the open source music is pretty good and i already mentioned it but I ADORE THE ARTSTYLE. first time an artstyle clicked for me in a way that i didnt know until i saw it that I wanted it.

>>47370
>>47371
I played the first episode and i'm both intrigued and somewhat disappointed.

The story didn't strictly impress me, yet it's a very solid set up. Morgan seems like both a fun character and someone you rarely see as a protagonist, so i would really like to see how she is utilized and plays off the future suspects. Gameplay was a mixed bag, because everything was so easy and tempting to savescum. Still i can see future episodes making more creative use of the gambling mechanic and thus making it harder to savescum without genuinely minmaxing.

>I ADORE THE ARTSTYLE
This is where i need to disagree the hardest. The 3d environment mixed with 2d characters invites comparisons to Danganronpa, which i see as extremely unfavorable. The smooth, washed-out environments feel non-specific and lifeless, like an empty Garry's Mod map, clashing with the decent character art. I don't know if this a generational thing, but i absolutely cannot stand the plasticy blender look of many modern indie games.

On a side note, camera movement is extremely jarring and a lot of other individual ui elements feel super scuffed. Why would i want to look at the diegetic navigation device phone from the side instead of the front like a normal menu! Again Spike Chunsoft did all of this right from the very start. The last i played was V3, so i'm probably going to start playing the fangames now.

>its not chudded out like Val-hall-a
Could you elaborate in what way it's chudcoded specifically. I was getting more of a strong lolbert current, because of the way it glorified living in literal Night City – Chiba, Japan.

>>47375

unfortunately i dont think the base formula will change. in fact it might even get easier especially in high rolling mode which doesnt really prevent savescumming. you get lots and lots of chips from winning. Of course they could balance this by making the stakes even higher but for the first two episodes if you've accumulated a lot of chips, even if you dont save scum you're basically god mode. I think high roller mode should not allow a "save file" at all unless you fully complete the episode.
oh i havent played danganronpa . i think that waS one of the games they are inspired by it. agree w your critiques tho.

>lolbert current
yeah its apologetic because of all the tech and stuff and its implied benefits. Maybe i was a bit heavy handed with non-chudded out but i think thats just a problem with cyberpunk in general, the glorification of night city. at best it takes on an attitude "sigh thats horrible but what can you do right?". I wouldnt say its a strong lolbert current, I think the writing, especially in news articles gives it a decent lefty spin. Not in depth of course but communism, anarchism etc does exist.

I assume you're done with the prologue right? Although dont expect too much, the first two episodes should shake off a little of that lolbert flavor I'd hope/if i remember correctly. At worst it makes the capitalist adjacent characters into quirky fun villains.

>>47383
>Maybe i was a bit heavy handed with non-chudded out but i think thats just a problem with cyberpunk in general
I was asking about valhalla. If anything the presentation seems liberal in the "sigh thats horrible but…" way you mentioned.
>thats just a problem with cyberpunk
The game seems somewhat atypical to cyberpunk, with the government reportedly "spending a lot of money" and running the justice system you interact with. It's even made me start doubting, if the megacorporations are really the ones in charge!
>I assume you're done with the prologue right?
I am. I think it would actually fit if they made Morgan a total liberal machiavellian wet blanket, who constantly gets dunked on by others. I'm probably going to wait for them to finish all of the episodes until i get a copy.

>>47352
piracy HAS to work because it's not only a means of obtaining stuff, it's literally a means of archival. clamping down piracy worries me more than digital distribution ever will, because that means losing access to shitton of movies, video games and music IP holders have 0 interest in distributing in my country

This shit is so annoying!
I have no idea how anyone can be a capitalist in 2026

>>47359
at the end of the day all games are 1s and 0s so as long as nerds have the time and energy to decompile and/or crack games, they cannot be gatekept. As long as we have access to portable storage devices, we can share media, even if it has to go offline.

>>47363
a capitalist is a person who owns means of production and exploits workers. people like being capitalist because it makes them a lot of money. a capitalist is not simply a worker who "believes capitalism is the best system". that's called false consciousness.

I loved Undertale back in the day but I can't bring myself to care about this. I don't even doubt that it's good. Ship just sailed. Right time right place yadda yadda

<we're gonna need Moses if it keeps flooding like this

>>47333
as someone who was huge into homestuck when i was a teen (that's the only age you're allowed to read homestuck at) but has never played undertale/deltarune i feel like how magic johnson must feel in that i caught that infection pretty early on and by all means i should've succumbed to the disease but, by the grace of god, i didn't…

>>47326
He would never

Baffled by the positive reception of chapter 5.
(Almost) nothing of note happened. Dialogue was cringeworthy. Jokes were more misses than hits. References for references sake. Flat characters incorporated as round characters. Waaay too long.
Seen some buzz around this or that being unexpected, but something being unexpected is not itself a good thing. The secret boss seems a good example of this (regardless of the character or fight itself).

What do chapter 5 enjoyers see what I am missing?

I wonder if in hoi4 vanilla mp is it possible to beat UK's navy as Italy (assuming both are experienced players), since the game favours more numbers of ships & stat stacking in the naval calculation.
Ig its near impossible :'(

I am also having hard time thinking of counters to some metas, like what will be counter to low visibility, high speed, light/torpedoe attack dd spam, maybe armored light cruisers or light attack heavy cruisers , or maybe cheap battleship spam with only one turret to maximize armor/hp.

>>47193
i'm bored, who should i play as? in any mod you recommend

>>47214
Not the OP but,

If you are visual novel enjoyer,
TNO - Iberian Union,
If you want more fighting, more war mechanics, and then a story,
EAW - Changelingia
(Or Posada's Hippogriffia / Siren's Hippogriffia )
If you want to larp & have a challenging game
Kaiserredux - German Empire w kaiserredux expert ai mod, its actually difficult fighting the two front war with Communards and Russian Sphere.

Those r what comes to my mind rn.

>>47215
Cheers. Have already played all of those (except KRR but played it in KR, not with expert ai though) but good suggestions.

Thoughts on map-game-in-development, Espiocracies iteration on event chains? Kind of interested, as event chains have become very stale:
>Technically, it's a kind of advanced event chain, so it has all the usual features of event popups known from other strategy games – trigger conditions, flavor text, clickable decisions, and effects on the game world. The caveat is that they are never triggered automatically; they are launched through a conscious governmental decision (so the Soviets may decide to never launch the blockade).
<Inside, what makes it "advanced" is that the event has a decision tree (a'la dialogue tree) which is traversed in turns by two opposing parties.
>Every decision has defined availability and costs (in terms of state budget, strategic intelligence, military deployment, etc). Once chosen, a decision:
<-directly influences the game world; for instance, "nuclear escalation" means actual progress up the escalation ladder, which may lead all the way to WW3;
<-modifies the event's -100 to +100 score (similar to a "war score");
<-grants a new set of decisions to the other side.

>The point of divergence is won by either side once the score reaches -100/+100, or when the end of the decision tree is reached (in which case the side with no responses left loses the confrontation), or when external circumstances derail the event (eg. the aforementioned WW3). The final outcome implements a wide range of bespoke history-rewriting consequences. For instance, a Soviet victory in West Berlin will cause further Western retreats, delay the establishment of NATO (or significantly weaken NATO if it is already established), damage the image of the current American administration, turn the German population against the West, and so on.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1670650/view/697642648593240744

>and I don't just mean the surface level "good = left, evil = right"
<The Pacifist Route embodies leftism at it's core: doing what's right
<Conversely, the Genocide Route embodies the right wing: going out of your way to make things worse for everyone
uyghur, I don't know why I believed you

play another game

>I don't just mean the surface level "good = left, evil = right"
<leftism is when good values and rightism is when making things worse
fucking retarded pseud

>>47320
>leftism is when good values and rightism is when making things worse
Thats pretty much correct.

>>47340
But much of the "historically progressive" things have been declared evil: slavery, genocide of natives, enclosure, child labor, the early industrial system, Manifest Destiny, and the British conquest of India.

>>47345
Capitalism is progressive vis a vis feudalism, doesn't mean that it is right now