Ninja Gaiden 2

That’s unfortunate. Too bad Sony has patented the haptics/adaptive triggers. It’s such a good feature, I would kill for an Xbox style form factor controller with triggers like that.

Well, that’s the nice thing about using AI for this, she can have unlimited dialogue - as can anyone else in the game. You can talk to anyone and have full conversations with them, and they have a working memory too. Your companions have unique personalities and unique random backstories and even some character development.

Well, I guess Hip is a named character so she will have a fixed, lore-accurate backstory.

Same! I love the form factor of it and it still hasn’t given out yet. Only thing that made me even think about wanting to replace it was the haptic/adaptive triggers on the PS5 controller. Don’t like the form factor but man those triggers are nice.

I didn’t realise you were an Anomaly enjoyer! I love that game too, between the mood and the atmosphere, the hunger/thirst/sleep system along with the FDDA animations and of course Alife I think Anomaly is one of the most immersive games for me.

I’ve actually been working on a mod lately that uses AI to produce dynamic dialogue for NPCs in Anomaly, which leads to even more immersion.

Interesting, the S&S games have been on my list for a while but I’ve never gotten around to them. I got Salt and Sacrifice with a Humble Bundle last year but didn’t play it because o figured I should play the first game first. Looks like I got the worse one then?

Immersion is tricky, because it is an incredibly subjective thing. At the end of the day, what immersion means (I think) is that the “veil” separating you from the game is incredibly thin and transparent. Think of it as wearing glasses: if a game is un-immersive the lenses are dirty and scratched. You can still see whatever is in front of you, but you’re constantly aware of the fact that you’re wearing glasses. An immersive game is like wearing perfectly pristine glasses: you forget you’re wearing glasses at all and can just take in what’s in front of you.

An immersive game to me is something that successfully manages to both suspend disbelief and sustain the illusion of a living world, letting you mostly forget that it’s a pre-programmed game you’re interacting with. I always found something like the STALKER games great for this, with their dynamic A-life AI scheduling really selling the whole living world feeling.

This is the way.

From a day of using it I think it’s a better experience overall. The player seems a lot smoother, especially transitioning between PiP and fullscreen and back.

I’ve had less time than I’d hoped, but I have started to play The Last Express. So far it’s a really beautiful, fascinating experience - although somewhat daunting.

Unlike a traditional point-and-click adventure, The Last Express plays out in real time: the train you’re on is constantly moving and the other passengers are too, doing things around the train and having conversations. This is not just an old fashioned classic adventure game or solving puzzles, but actually puts a major emphasis on time and timing. You find a dead body in a compartment? You gotta deal with it somehow, and when and how you do so seem to actually matter, creating some either fully or partly branching narratives (haven’t finished it yet). There is no quick save, but there is a “rewind” function if you’ve messed something up irrevocably, although there are also apparently also multiple endings depending on how you do things. For a game this old, the game world actually feels much more alive and vibrant than many newer titles. I think the nature of the limited scope of a confined space of a train, combined with the smart use of basically overlayed 2D rotoscoped film clips, allowed them to create this truly immersive experience where it really feels like you’re actively participating in a movie playing out in real time, not interacting with static NPCs in a video game.

Finally, I need to pour heaps of praise over the art direction and graphics. Using rotoscoping over live action footage and fully voice acting everything makes this game hold up visually in such a remarkable way for a 1997 release. It’s also good phenomenal voice acting - especially for the time - with some really good voice directing. I was incredibly impressed when eavesdropping on a conversation between two women early on, one french and the other English. They would both switch languages occasionally in a natural way, and both use the appropriate accent when speaking their non-native language.

Absolutely recommend this game to anyone who appreciates games as an art form.

He did also award violentacrez with a unique “Pimp Daddy” award, however.

Agreed.

I actually think this post has a lot of solid points, many of which I have argued myself in the past. One thing was funny though. He says:

Today’s Reddit is a phone product. The “just use the web UI” crowd is not representative of mainstream behavior.

and then several users in the comments were turned off by the Web UI of Lemmy.

They’ve done it forever, it’s been part of their initial concept for ages. Lots of the actual old games on there (as the name Good Old Games is derived from) are pre-patched to work on modern machines without setup, often also including community patches if there are any.

Got a chuckle out of me.

Yes, hence why I said I understand why it needs to remain opt-in. It still doesn’t change the fact that it’s a burdensome and inconvenient quirk.

Not that I have a better solution to propose either, mind. Feels like one of those things that just is what it is, an unfortunate downside of the federated design.

I always tend to push back on people saying “oh, the Fediverse is so complicated”, but small quirks like this make me go “well okay they have a small point”.

I understand why lemmy-federate.com probably has to remain an opt-in service, but man would it be so much smoother if it was just automatic.

The format of exclamation point in front like [email protected] is the standardized instance-agnostic link format around here! It will let anyone open the community in their own home instance.

Great advice! Lemmy-federate.com is a huge help for smaller instances!