I only have a small amount of experience with generating images using AI models, but I have found this to be true. It’s like making a photocopy of a photocopy. The results can be unintentionally hilarious though.

The base game has improved considerably since launch, though it still lacks some promised content and performance will vary depending on your hardware. I have a PC with a Ryzen 7 and a RTX 2070, which can run the game well enough, but have not tried it on a machine with an AMD video card.

I think the base game might still be on sale and now might be a good time to pick it up for 50% off. Major updates will still be coming to the base game even if you don’t buy Phantom Liberty… including vehicle combat, I believe.

Considering how well the Super Mario movie worked out for Illumination, I’m expecting to hear something about a new movie or short TV series. Maybe more Mario, maybe Legend of Zelda. In any case, there’s no way Nintendo won’t be going hard in that direction now that they see what a gold mine it is.

Andromeda is fine as long as you don’t compare it to the core Mass Effect trilogy. Ryder is no Shepard, and none of your squadmates are as memorable as Garrus, Tali, Mordin and the rest. But take the game as its own thing, and it’s a pretty good time.

Yep, Live Another Life is usually in my list too. I inevitably wind up downloading a mod that breaks the wagon scene, so it’s a life saver.

Yeah, I haven’t branched out too much in the Fediverse and I mostly stick to Beehaw. Thanks for sharing! I guess I can always make a lemmy.world account, or wait for Beehaw to re-federate.

Modding Skyrim is a rabbit hole that leads straight into the Mines of Moria. And the Balrog has opened an adult bookstore.

Nothing wrong with that answer! Skyrim can even be played in 3rd person, and there are mods to make 3rd person combat more satisfying if you get it on PC.

I thought “Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion” was a game trying a little too hard to be quirky, with an attention-grabbing title and little depth beyond one or two jokes.

That game… went places. Places I did not expect.

I played a couple of hours of the first game. The atmosphere and audio design were amazing. The core gameplay, though… it needed some work. Repetitive combat and lack of clarity in navigating the game’s world made me give it up. If the sequel improves on those weak spots, it could be very enjoyable. But yeah, the trailer told us very little about that.

Is Kotaku’s business model rage-baiting to generate clicks? Yes.

Is toxicity toward female gamers online a real problem? Also yes.

Some of my friends get annoyed when I take that stance, but it’s absolutely possible for both statements to be true simultaneously. I want women to feel safe if they want to try online gaming, and it’s counter-productive when sites like Kotaku constantly post fear-mongering articles about it rather than offer any solutions.

Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President of the NUSA?

It sounds like they’ve backed away from making this an open world game like Skyrim, and are styling Avowed in a similar fashion to the Outer Worlds. I have mixed feelings about that… I was hoping we’d see a successor to the Elder Scrolls series, just in case Elder Scrolls VI gets stuck in development hell until the heat death of the universe. However, if the Obsidian devs don’t want to do open world, and think the game will be better without that expectation hanging over them, it’s probably best to trust them on that.

They actually brought back the Annoying Adoring Fan from the Arena in Elder Scrolls IV. Same voice actor and everything.

They’re trying hard to push it as the new standard, but not every publisher is doing it yet. It’s been tried before, and fizzled out because consumers stopped buying as much but unfortunately, it might stick this time.

$70 USD to play an open world Bethesda game on launch day is a joke. There’s no other way to describe it. It’s laughable that Microsoft and Bethesda think anyone should be paying that much money to beta test the buggy, unstable, maybe even unfinished version of Starfield we’re likely getting in September. You’ll be paying the most money for the worst version of the game, period. And this is coming from someone who bought Skyrim on launch day in 2011.

Even if Starfield is better than expected, and surprisingly playable on launch day, I have no doubt in my mind that it will be an even better game by late 2024 thanks to the modding community, and you’ll probably be able to get it on sale by then. Especially if you plan to buy it on Steam, where big sales events seem to happen every week. But I doubt Starfield is going to be finished in September, because Bethesda has been given a mandate to hit a product launch target determined by Microsoft board room executives. We’ve all seen enough games this year, especially on PC, that were practically broken on day one, and especially after Redfall, I have a feeling that Starfield won’t be any better.

One of the things that bothered me about the original FF7 is that certain party members felt completely arbitrary. You could ignore them completely, and it would have zero impact on the game. I mean… why did we need Cait Sith? WHY?

With FF7 Remake and Rebirth though, they have a chance to improve things. If the game forces us to use Red XIII in order to meaningfully develop his character in the process, I don’t have an issue with that, even if I have to bench Tifa for 30 minutes. Make the characters more memorable, give them greater relevance in the story, and I’m willing to put up with the occasional railroading.

My money is on “Reunion”, personally.

There wasn’t much in this showcase worth noting, but here were the notes I took:

Mortal Kombat 1 - Kameo fighters seem more like a gimmick than a fundamental gameplay change. The fights look mostly the same as they did in MK11. As for the story, how many times has MK rebooted its timeline at this point? I was definitely not sold, based on what they showed.

Dead By Daylight - Nicolas Cage is in it as… just Nicolas Cage. It won’t get me to play Dead By Daylight but it was still more hype than most of the showcase was.

Spider-Man 2 - Release date confirmed as Oct. 20, 2023, map will include Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, and Venom confirmed to be not Eddie Brock, but they won’t say who. Even though the big reveal already happened in the PS Showcase, this was still one of the few highlights of the show.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth - I’m pretty sure this is the first time we’ve had a PS5 game that will require 2 discs. That’s a huge amount of data. When this eventually gets ported to the PC, you will need a brand new 1 TB hard drive, just to put FF7 on it.

Yeah, I know my disgust with MTs is partially due to the fact that my first console was the Commodore 64, and back in my day we _{dang new fangled vidja games gul dangit}

But I seriously think that any time the game developers spent creating paid cosmetics and the battle pass system is time they could have spent on literally anything else to improve the base game. Other titles, like Square Enix’s Avengers game, definitely suffered because the company made monetization a higher priority than ensuring quality in the initial product at launch. I don’t want future titles to be cash shops that happen to have a game attached to them, but the AAA studios all seem to be going in that direction.