It is definitely in my Top 10 games of all time. I haven’t settled on a final placement yet. It’s a beautiful piece of videogames-as-art, the story and the characters are well written and acted and the plot itself is very compelling. The world building is interesting and engrossing and the music boasts one of the best Video Game OSTs of all time, without a doubt.

There are some minor niggles, sure. It’s not literally perfect. It’s unfortunate that you can easily make yourself so overpowered you miss cutscenes in the final fight if you don’t consciously gimp yourself.

But other than that, none of the minor niggles really detract from the impact of the core experience, which is super super strong.

I have to be honest here and say I don’t understand where you’re coming from at all.

Why should every single game be changed to suit your specific play style?

Literally nobody is asking for this. Accessibility options, not “permanently and irrevocably reduce the difficulty of all games”. The good thing about options is that they’re option-al. If you want the game to remain challenging, the presence of accessibility options does not affect you in the slightest. You can just ignore them and go on with your day, enjoying the game just as it was.

It’s true I haven’t played the Elden Ring expansion, and I guess that’s the most difficult one now so it’s required to have played it to be able to parade around your gamer credentials? Whatever that’s supposed to mean? To me gaming is about enjoying a medium of culture, not a dick measuring contest. I’ve played Dark Souls, I’ve played Elden Ring. I’ve beaten Sister Friede, I’ve beaten Malenia.

I still think accessibility options are good.

Accessibility options are good. Not everyone is a god gamer with the reflexes of a 14-year old hopped up on Adderall and Red Bull. Some people just want to enjoy the story and the atmosphere of a game and it should be normal for us to let them.

I mean, I prayed to the nether gods that we’d get a Letho game. He’s the perfect protagonist if they wanted to move away from the books and more firmly into their own OC. Always had huge main character energy, and would be perfectly suited for exploring the morally grey areas of the Witcher world.

the biggest problem plaguing the STALKER remasters is a strange bug that seems to cause the games to render at a resolution lower than what you set it as and then upscale it improperly, resulting in blurry, muddy visuals that persist even if you turn settings like AMD FSR Super Resolution and depth of field off.

Okay that’s… that’s not great, but should be fixable in a patch surely?

Another highly contentious change that’s drawn the ire of fans is the complete removal of everything Russian or related to the Soviet Union, including all Russian voice acting and localization, the use of Soviet rubles as in-game currency, and even every Soviet sign, statue, and landmark present in the real-world Chernobyl Exclusion Zone that were included in the original titles.

The versimilitude and basis in real world locations was a massive part of what made the originals so great, you can’t just scrub that off. I empathize with them, and I am personally firmly on the side of Ukraine but this sits really poorly with me.

The Zone’s supernatural mysteries are layered over recognizable pieces of Soviet iconography and rusting Soviet technology is a huge part of what gives STALKER its atmospheric vibe, and the absence of beloved voice lines like “Cheeki breeki iv damke!” just feels…wrong

Yeah I’m not touching these abominations. They even removed Cheeki Breeki? The single most recognisable thing in their games, the most prevalent and beloved meme?

It’s not finished yet but OpenXray Gunslinger is probably going to be a better STALKER: Call of Pripyat remaster than the official one that just got announced.

Woolie’s wise words ring true even years later.

Well needed to be honest. I love the original trilogy but they could do with a fresh coat of paint. I wish they’d touched up the animations too, the gunplay of the originals can feel quite… early 00’s.

Not sure this is the ideal long term solution but anything that combats Discord’s status of being an absolute information black hole is good.

Man, reading that old 2005 PC Gamer article really brings me back to older, better and happier times of gaming journalism too. It even mentions the bundled DVD with demos, mods and goodies you’d get each month. Those really were the days.

I think there is some memorable side content, and I don’t think there are too many main story sequences that are that bad. However, I agree with you that a fundamental problem no patch could fix is that the story CDPR wanted to tell marries really poorly with an open-world RPG. It’s often immersion breaking and it frequently messes up the pacing.

It almost feels like they felt pressured into including an open world from outside expectations when what they really wanted to make was a linear, cinematic action game.

Yes, plenty. This mod is what you want, but make sure to go into the comments and check the pinned posts. A user there has made an incredible compilation of essentially all the mods out there that makes the game harder and gritter. Just pick the ones that sound appealing from that list.

There are so many amazing mods that it’s easy to sink probably the equivalent of an entire playthroughs worth of hours into setting up a modlist. I have like 250 mods going or something like that.

Highly recommend it.

Great high effort post that hopefully will help some people interested in taking a look at this series before it’s delisted. Very interesting that both the modern-day Larry’s ended up so high, I can’t say I hear about them that often. Apart from Larry 1 for historical reasons it’s usually Love For Sail I hear about.

Will the Larry games still be up on GOG I wonder? I’ve played the (remake of the) first one and have been curious about Love For Sail as well as it’s apparently the best one (?). For better or worse they are iconic games that are part of the cultural landscape of gaming.

I don’t really think it’s a matter of perspective. These sites all omit the title of whatever thing it is they’re talking about so you have to click through to find out. They do it because research has shown it works to increase clicks. That is well within the definition of clickbait.

Threadiverse is by far the best name for it.

It’s great that Piefed is adding them, but as long as Lemmy is the largest bulk of users it won’t really be all that impactful. Flairs lose their utility (or fun, depending on the type and context) when only like 1% of the users can see them.

I do miss user flairs. I hope Lemmy adds then too eventually.