Amidst Meta's layoff of much of their AI team, people in droves begging MS to let them opt out of their new AI, and the overall rejection of AI art as "slop", we have EA apparently revealing they are spending more money fixing AI's mistakes than they thought they saved using it.
Then there's AI writing, which is also very generic, and the complete unreliability of AI to answer any questions since... well it literally lacks any comprehension of what words mean. With all that said, it looks like AI really was just a flash in the pan, not the total sea change it was being sold as. In fact, it's apparently what's propping up the stock market while the rest of us certainly don't feel like we're in a strong economy. A market "correction" is ahead of us...
It's an amazing technique, but graphics cards just aren't ready for this yet, at least not in anything close to 60FPS rendering... more like 0.5FPM. Still, if graphics cards can manage that before Moore's law disintegrates entirely, this'll mean the end of clipping entirely, and not a bit of LLM involved whatsoever.
We all remember this guy for his revival of the Ninja Gaiden games, his showmanship and his arrogance, and well, yes his lustful female character designs (which... he's free to do, but not free from others discussing the implications).
I think the most hilarious interview I saw with the guy involved his shock at Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma's sixaxis feature... namely that it "jiggled" the female player character's chest. He was very surprised to hear about that and wondered if the developer was "doing okay". Clearly, he had a limit, and that decision in the Sigma version crossed it.
Well, MS is doing every single thing they said they weren't going to do when the legal proceedings over their acquisition of Activision were going on. MS, Sony, Nintendo, every one of them are finding fun ways to exploit us.
Just to be clear what happened- people just created money from nothing. It's legal, but it shouldn't be.
There's a lot for me to say here, but this random guy puts it very well. This isn't good. There are gamers who are saying "Hey if we get good games it's good and if it collapses it's good". Selfish really. This is going to be devastating. This is bigger than MS jacking up the price, again, of XBox Live. It's bigger than... Microsoft's layoffs.
AI is DRASTICALLY overvalued right now. The investment is ridiculous, and there's about to be a massive market correction verging on what happened with the housing market collapse.
I've been going indie for a while now, and I don't regret it. I get a lot of games on GOG and Itch.io too, and having those installers is looking very safe right now.
Has anyone played FF7 Remake? I do very little gaming nowadays, but I was feeling nostalgic for PS1-era RPGs so I gave FF7 Remake Interograde (what a weird name) a couple hours of my time the other day. It's kind of cool being able to revisit the characters and the story of FF7 and my god does everything look gorgeous (I have spent entire uninterrupted... minutes just staring at the details on the underside of Midgar's plates) but I couldn't ignore how absolutely horrid and lame the writing was. I don't remember the writing/dialogue being this cringey in the 1990s. I'm guessing I was probably just a stupid kid back then and didn't know any better.
Another thing that gets at me is how the game assumes knowledge of the original story. None of it seems like it would make sense or resonate unless you're already a fan and played the original.
It doesn't make sense to me that a game that took millions of dollars to develop would have such glaring issues. A lot of it feels it could've been written by a kid.
Anyway, I want to finish it, but I probably won't because I don't have the attention span for gaming anymore; my brain (like the brains of many...) has rotted to absolutely nothing from excessive YouTube and Reddit consumption.
FUCK, this game is good. I was hooked immediately. At its very opening, it effectively draws in the player by dropping them into a high-stakes hostage negotiation. The player can investigate the aftermath of an attack to gather information before talking directly to the hostage-taker.
Androids, AI, sentience, free will, civil rights for robots... all of these are subjects that sci-fi has thoroughly explored, particularly recently, with the (very annoying) rise in AI hype. Hey, at least all those tech-bro dipshits finally shut up about NFTs. Detroit: Become Human is 8 years old, so to its credit, this is long before the most recent trend took off.
None of that matters, though: the developers at Quantic Dream are brilliant at story-telling. You can take any well-trodden subject and with enough talent, create a masterpiece. On paper, a lot of the scenarios the game puts you through are rather predictable: you're an android who has to decide whether to obey an unethical order (like ignoring your owner beating his daughter instead of intervening), or decide whether an android life is worth the same a human life. But the skill at which Quantic Dream develops these characters and introduces you to them is enough to keep them riveting. Even if, at their essence, the ideas here aren't new, it's gratifying to play a game that engages your heart/brain, not just hand/eye coordination.
One small criticism of the game is that it's rather "point-and-click". There isn't very much action. Most of the controls are just inputting buttons to inch the character along a predetermined track. However, there are different decisions the player can make to explore different branches. This is my first play-through, and I'm not certain how far along I am, so I can't say for sure how much variation you can really experience. I imagine the core chapters are the same, but there are slight differences, and decisions from earlier chapters influence later chapters.
Ideally, you would unlock completely different plots based on decisions you make, but I know how quickly that can scale up, so I'm sure the basic plot still be the same. I'm okay with that. My playthrough now is mostly a non-violent MLK approach to fighting for androids' rights. Next playthrough, I'm gonna go full on Black Panthers on these carbon-based fuckers. Also, fuck Connor, goddamn Uncle Tom, he's like a slave whipping other slaves in antebellum South. I feel good foiling him and stopping him from killing other androids (though part of that is my pacifistic nature, if you can believe I have one).
I haven't loved a game this much since Control. Swear to god, all I do when I play games nowadays is complain about how much they suck and "only an idiot would play this game" *plays it for another 20 hours*. It's rare that I come across a gem like this. It's especially a breath of cold water because it's on the heels of months of playing old, janky Nintendo Online games. Which are still fun, but man, they really make you appreciate the progress we've made.
Nightdive did it again, and released a very well done collection of Heretic and Hexen, plus their expansions. They've also added two new episodes, one for each game.
The music, as with Doom + Doom 2, has been fully remastered as well as having SC-55 recordings available for the authentic experience. It even has an FM synthesis option. These games, much like Quake 2, are notable for not being quite as well regarded as their predecessors and having a number of common complaints. As a result, maps, weapon behavior, and enemy AI have all been tweaked to address the most glaring complaints aimed at the games. There are options when starting a new game or using level select to turn these adjustments off if one prefers to go in with the authentic experience, but frankly I personally recommend keeping all of them on, just like with Nightdive's Quake 2 remaster adjustments.
Notably, the PS1 version of Hexen's FMVs have been included as well. I'm not sure if they did an AI upscale or if they did what they did for Quake 2 and completely rebuilt and rerendered the cutscenes from scratch, but based on some of the visuals I see when looking at youtube compilations of the PS1 version, I suspect it's the latter. Either way, the addition is much appreciated.
Much like Doom + Doom 2, they've added in a gallery of development content to peruse. They also have full multiplayer options, including split screen, LAN, and their online servers. Cheat codes are handled in a similar way. You can permanently "unlock" the cheats in a menu if you remember the old codes, or just flip a switch to toggle all the cheats in the menu as available. It depends on what you'd rather do. Some of the cheats no longer work (namely debugging related ones), and some have had their activation codes altered likely for copyright reasons (Rambo got changed to GunsGunsGuns for example, and ponce (which is apparently a slur in some countries) to HealThySelf). In most cases, you can use either the heretic or hexen version of the code as they both are fully functional. The level skip code won't unlock anything because there's now simply a level select menu, but the code can still just be input in-game as before.
The full suite of gameplay and graphics options from Nightdive's previous efforts are available, for all kinds of enhancements or purist interpretations.
Heretic and Hexen are notable for implementing vertical aiming. While it doesn't grant a full 180 degrees of vertical aim, it provides enough to do the job without completely distorting what's being rendered due to the 2.5D nature of the game engine. It was originally keyboard bound, but this version assigns it to the mouse as with most games since Quake. To aid in aiming, it also adds in an aiming reticule, but these older games tend to be a lot more forgiving when it comes to aim, so auto targeting should help especially with the vertical axis. No, port additions like "jumping" aren't present here, as it breaks level design, even with the tweaks this version brings.
All in all, it comes recommended, even if there's clearly still a little work to do as with all Nightdive ports. I should add that if you own either Heretic or Hexen on either Steam or GOG, you already own this. Nightdive and Id have been very good about making sure not to double-dip their customer base. Also, if you still want access to the DOS originals, they are still fully available. If you bought them before, you can still redownload them, and if you buy the new remaster, you get access to the old versions too.
So... does Tendocity intend to comply with UK law? We have questionable content for minors, like violence and such, and by the letter of their laws, we MUST require ID.
I submit that for most of us, our ID is the age of our profile on this site, old enough to drink in most cases... but requirements for new profiles is something etoven now must consider, or geoblock the site in the UK.
I'm being a bit tongue in cheek with this, but that's the literal reality now.
