/games/ - Games

Lately I’ve seen a huge influx of good games that try to update the outdated capitalist realist Cyberpunk genre to the current political and economic landscape. Stuff like Disco Elysium is getting more and more recognition they rightfully deserve for depicting the hopeless and bleak death of modern revolution. However they’re still have some semblance of hope like with Ghostrunner having the corporation being destroyed by a revolution in contrast to the sad oppression of the system.

Another great but obscure example is whatever the fuck Cruelty Squad is. It’s fully embraced the boring drug fueled dystopia aesthetic while delivering basically Deus Ex but without the stealth. Compared to the faux shell of a Cyberpunk game 2077 was (full of cyber but nothing about the societal implications of such technologies other than some edgy infantile “message” about “soul”), this game have everything and everyone be miserable using the cyber-enhancements. Space colonization and AI being pipe dreams. Corporations are not knowingly malicious but only apart of the rot of capitalism.

Are there any sci do books or games that take advantage of transport and combat vehicles outside of Star Wars’ IPs? Even franchises as large as warhammer, battletech, and supreme commander tend to forget about the importance of transporting a societies resources in a true sci if world.

I’ve been thinking about the imperium’s image for most fans, and I’m noticing just exaggerated everything about that faction’s lore is.

Hive worlds
Like think about these planets for a second. These supposedly ‘kardashev type 1’ societies that function as ecumenopolies, but when taking into account the number of planets the estimated 3.5 quadrillion humans in the 40k universe occupy, the number of moons available, the fact that human settlements exist on a hierarchy rather than being centralized urban centres, and the fact that not every human necessarily is on or lives on a planet or moon and you end up with hive cities that are either moderately dense or just straight up empty for most of the time they’re functioning (even on planets not considered deathworlds). Like fuck, the way the writers describe hive cities is similar to the way advertisers describe cities like Tokyo and New York; they are big cities, but they aren’t gargantuan—especially as they plateau in density relative to one’s displacement from their centres.

War
Then there’s the conflicts. Even the writers can’t be bothered to pretend as if the Milky Way is always in a state of galaxy-ending conflicts. The vast majority of the imperiums battles aren’t fought by space marines or the guardsman but by the PDF forces and the navy. It’s not like the latter two forces do nothing, but they’re only active like once every few decades to centuries—or even millennia. Even with major conflicts like the crusades or the heresy, the galaxy as a whole will never see a conflict like the cybernetic revolt ever again… and that’s in the worst possible scenario; there’s plenty of worse conflicts in sci fi.

Population
Additionally the ‘untold billions’ is shockingly low given how long humanity has been around for (the same applies for the other factions). No really, if the human population were to grow by even 0.1% each earth year, by m.42 there would be 8.16*10^26 people. A number that’s a far cry from the 3.5 quadrillion to 330+ quadrillion estimates for the 40k population by the fan base.

There’s really not much more I can add to this. For as hard as the authors try to make the galaxy seem, there really isn’t that much wrong with the world building of rouge trader. Anyone getting into the series today that actually takes anything going on seriously misses the point of this goofy fucking tabletop game.

Is Dwarf Fortress the most Historical Materialist game of all time?

>Simulates thousands of years of history
>Simulates individual lives
>Simulates entire economies
>Simulates private property, families, cities, states
>does not privilege the player with any kind of protagonism. You are simply an entity in a larger civilization
>any entity can be wiped out at any given moment and replaced with a similar one.
>deep physics simluation that includes erosion, precipitation, and the formation of continents
>can instantaneously generate an entire encyclopedia of interconnected occurences spanning thousands of years
>simulates marriage, divorce, courtship, cheating, betrayal, coups, assassinations, persecutions, and purges

Can someone tell me if any of them are worth playing? I bought them while they were on steam sale so they were like two dollars each, are they any fun or are they just standard libshit stuff

https://schombert.github.io/Project-Alice/index.html

Getting Started
Please consult docs/contributing.md for more information! it contains information on how to compile the project on both Windows AND Linux

Picking up where Open V2 left off
The goal of Project Alice (named after Alice Roosevelt Longworth) is essentially to create a new version of open v2 – my earlier project to create a Victoria 2 clone – and then to finish a working, feature complete, version of the game. This means that, at least initially, there will be few departures from doing things as Victoria 2 did them, simply to keep the project focused and on track. Once a 1.0 is complete, we can then use it as a playground for new experiments. As of July 2023, I have basically caught up to where open v2 was, minus some deficiencies in the ui.

I hope to find a few people to form an art team that can recreate the assets that Victoria 2 uses to give this project its own distinctive visual identity. I know that is a big ask, but on the other hand, there will be no 3d modeling required. We already have access to a set of new flags that we can use, courtesy of the SOE project.

In comparison to other projects
In comparison to SOE (Symphony of Empires) this project is a more direct Victoria 2 clone, while SOE is its own game. Nevertheless, I tend to think of it as a sister project. We do have some people here involved with both (I myself make the occasional suggestion there), and if you see something that we make that they could use, I am sure that they would appreciate the contribution. Likewise, we will be using at least some of their work.

With regards to the OpenVic2 project, although it "marketed" as a Victoria 2 "clone," that isn't what they are working towards creating. Instead, they intend to provide an entirely new set of assets, including events, decisions, etc., which will make their project more of a Victoria 2-ish game. It is also run with a very different managerial style. If you are interested in both Project Alice and OpenVic2, I suggest spending time with both teams or even joining both projects.

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Can I still be a communist if I play Helldivers 2?
THE FUCK YOU MEAN FLOOD DETECTED

Tabletop Games / Traditional Games
Wargames, Roleplaying Games, Board Games, Card Games, Drinking Games, and so on and so on.
What are you playing/running/home-brewing? What do you have to recommend or criticize?

Undertale is primarily a commentary on the ways people approach media. Genocide route, in that context, is a response to playing through games in the increasingly prevalent mechanical and consumptive way. While there's enough in there to support Toby exalting authorial intent, I think he's noticing trends in the ways people approach games (consumptive and completionist), but hasn't really diagnosed the cause, which is why he condemns the player for playing through genocide (or choosing to see it without playing themselves) as a personal failing rather than getting at things like the culture industry or trends in game design and marketing that encourage that kind of approach. As not a great fan of authorial intent I still see a lot of value in a game (or anything really) having the guts to resist people who only want to engage with it in a boring or distanced way.

no beat 'em ups thread?
post your favorite beat 'em ups, the ones you're currently playing or obscure titles you want to share
i'll start:
>Gourmet Sentai: Bara Yarou
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTjy_vHJ_3w
pretty cool game from 1995 for the snes that got a full english fan translation recently (https://cdromance.org/snes-rom/gourmet-sentai-bara-yarou-japan/)
instead of restoring HP by picking up health items like in other games you prepare meals in between stages with ingredients you pick up and heal that way instead, and there's no continues so you better figure out which meals you should be cooking because that's the only way to restore HP
the sprites are really nice and it has a surprising number of moves you can do compared to most beat 'em up games from that era
it also has a re-release on steam under the title "Gourmet Warriors" (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1104460/Gourmet_Warriors/) but i think the snes version with the fan translation is better since the official one also uses emulation anyway