Just finished Chapter 3 of 8. It has some very classic Telltale foibles. Sometimes the script seems to assume you made a decisions that you didn’t make and it makes the dialogue feel awkward. Other times, the sarcastic tone in a written dialogue choice isn’t clear when you select the option and the resulting scene isn’t at all what you thought you were suggesting. I suspect by the time I am done, I’ll have the general sense of “oh, my decisions didn’t ACTUALLY matter,” as is Telltale tradition, but I’m not far enough to judge in that space yet

Despite these fairly common for Telltale problems, it’s an incredibly witty and entertaining piece of entertainment, and perhaps one of better “no, seriously, there’s a game in here” Telltale products. The “dispatch” mechanic is, imo, a fun management game, and they tie it into the narrative in ways that feel clever. Everyone is at each others throats because of a story beat? People are actively sabotaging each other on the job and it’s making your job as their dispatcher harder. As a comedy and near-film, the writing is laugh-out-loud funny, the voice acting and character animation is top notch, and there’s an interesting story and world holding it all together. I’m sure people will argue that it’s a better movie than it is a game, and, as much as I enjoy the corporate dispatcher half of the game, I am sure many will agree, as the dialogue writing is truly the stand-out element of the game.

It’s very good. Not perfect, but very good, and compared to the older Telltale games, a real home-run.

Capitalism is built on the notion that wealth is virtue.

If you are rich, you made good decisions and the invisible hand has guided money to your pockets. You’ve created things that contribute to the comfort/progress of society as a whole, and your reward for it is to be held above others.

If you are poor, you have not been actively contributing to society. You have instead been a drain, and the invisible hand is punishing you got this. Your inability to find meaningful ways to contribute is a vice, which should be looked down on. Ultimately, if you cannot afford to live, that is survival of the fittest, and the world is better off without you.

If you believe any of the above to be true, you are delusional scum of the earth, and you are the reason everything sucks. You’d also feel right at home with the right-wing chuds currently undoing decades of progress.

Uh, yeah. Using other people as a means to your end is pretty well defined as immoral. Don’t try and throw your moral bankruptcy back at the whole world like we all feel the same.

I can’t wait to see the exemption for “part time workers” and suddenly everyone making less than a triple digit salary has exactly 32 hours a week, or whatever is legally permissible to pass as “part time work” in your country.

You’ve provided a fantastic common-sense solution designed off the simple premise that no one needs 12x of a living wage, and I can’t agree enough, but I know the capitalists would fuck it up at every stage possible, while simultaneously arguing that they’re justified in doing so because the method of economy that they worships has given them moral purchase to look down on the poors.

The ceo makes $96.5 million a year.

This should be severely punishable by the law. It causes more societal harm than many crimes with serious penalties.

You deserve a medal. I couldn’t even imagine responding to this post without speaking down to OP, so I opted to move on. Thank you for giving the advice he needs to hear and not sounding like a cunt about it they way I would have.

Bless.

Fairly confident I wound up with some malware from a “GOG” download from one of the sites in the megathread. I’ve already formatted and the files are long gone but I’ll tuck this link away for the future.

Fascinating. As much shit as I talk, I did discover a lot of good games via those discs. The Blades of Exile franchise, for example, really stands out as a series of underrated early windows RPGs.

Balatro, Loop Hero, all three of the noteworthy Mihoyo games, Sword of Convallaria - I’m going to get flak for including gacha games, but these ones are surprisingly well designed and written games, despite predatory monetization practices - Stardew Valley, Dead Cells, Vampire Survivors…

I think we’re kidding ourselves if we ignore that Among Us was a genuinely good game, despite being notorious brainrot zoomer bait.

I’m not sure why we shifted the goal post to mobile games, but the point stands.

Edit: I had to come back because I remembered how much I enjoyed Monster Hunter Stories on mobile, and the mobile version is actually the most complete version.

Hades 2, Silksong, and the FFTactics remake, all of which came out in the last like 3 weeks.

I’d genuinely call the first two 10/10s, and the only thing stopping me saying that about all three is FFTactics’ commitment to staying true to the original, as they kept some features, qualities and even bugs moving forward that are jank in the modern era, but keep the game feeling more authentic.

Ah, I see you have never picked up a “1000 best games for Windows” CD.

There are a lot of low quality games to complain about. There are also a lot of high quality, new games to experience. 10 years from now, the low quality games will be forgotten, while the high quality games will be looked back on, fondly. Posts will be made comparing the “high effort, high quality games from 10 years ago” to the modern slop, and the cycle will repeat…

But this doesn’t confirm my bias’.

Metal Hellsinger was one of the more inspired experiences I’ve played in the past several years. Really sad to see a studio making genuinely quality games have to shutter.

Seconded for Dark Cloud 2 specifically. Game is incredibly good.

Funnily enough, I’m on a stock Pixel 6. I flashed custom firmware onto my Pixel 2XL back in the day, and the gain wasn’t super worth it. My phone before that, some Motorola brand, I flashed custom firmware onto and it helped a lot with features I wanted and bloatware removal. But, let be real, save being in the Google ecosphere, the Pixel is as stripped down baseline as a phone gets. And since my job is all-in on the Google apps, I have to be in that space anyway. At some stage, it just doesn’t feel like there’s much of a point.

This is such a dishonest question, I barely know where to begin.

You know, fundamentally, I don’t hate Gamepass as a concept. “Netflix, but for videogames” is an idea I can get behind, as it widens the audience for something I love by lowering the bar of entry. There are plenty of people out there that benefit from being able to play a few games here and there without needing to commit hundreds of hours to $100 purchases.

But Netflix has overstepped with price hikes and ads, and I’ve cancelled my service with them. That Microsoft thinks it can charge some ~$40CAD a month is pure hubris. I hope they learn quickly that, at that price point, the enthusiast market will happily cancel and just buy their games outright, and the casual market will decide it’s an expense they don’t need.

Because if they’re shuttered, the company/people that make the company have the opportunity to go somewhere else and do something better. I’ve disliked everything they’ve produced since they were purchased by EA, so I’ve come to think the publisher holds them back.

I mean the last Bioware game I played and enjoyed start to finish was Dragon Age: Origins, so… /shrug.

I accept that ME2 was a good game, but I couldn’t get into it. It felt too much like a shooter, too little like an RPG for me. And don’t get me started on DA2. “ANOTHER WAVE!” and character customization being kneecapped, or completely removed in the case of your party members, left me quitting it after some 3-4 hours.

Inquisition was okay, but I still lost interest after some 6-8 hours. It wasn’t “bad,” but it was still an okay game wearing a good games skin.

Bioware losing the creative freedom to explore characters outside of the mainstream that the saudi’s are going to permit them to write/create is a real problem. As a marker of political freedom of expression and as a stance against the fucking fascists that are rapidly encroaching on people’s rights, this is a huge step in the wrong direction. But I won’t mourn any specific games. Honestly, I hope they get axed, so they are given the opportunity to go indie and/or get picked up by a better producer/studio.

The last Bioware game I genuinely enjoyed was Dragon Age: Origins, which was the last thing (mostly) developed before the EA buy-up. I’m sure it’s scary for the employees, but I suspect this is good for Bioware in the long term.