I'll tolerate bugs, up to a point, and some games are just intended to throw bugs at you (e.g. Goat Simulator), but telling me they're a great thing to have is just huffing copium.Telling me that "the glitches are part of the experience" doesn't make me more accepting of your half-baked product and it certainly doesn't make me want to play your game.
Sorry Bethesda and Arrowhead fans, just because you think falling through the map and losing progress is funny and entertaining doesn't mean that the rest of us do.
TBF, these glitches do create hilarious moments and memes. But we're laughing AT the glitches, not laughing with them. People seem to tolerate the visual glitches more.Telling me that "the glitches are part of the experience" doesn't make me more accepting of your half-baked product and it certainly doesn't make me want to play your game.
Sorry Bethesda and Arrowhead fans, just because you think falling through the map and losing progress is funny and entertaining doesn't mean that the rest of us do.
Casey Yano, co-founder of Slay the Spire developer Mega Crit, quit his job several years ago to work on the deckbuilder that would eventually earn a 92% from PC Gamer and a 97% overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam. It wasn't a smash hit at first, when it launched in early access, but as Slay the Spire picked up attention it eventually became the inspiration for dozens more singleplayer deckbuilding roguelikes. Many of those games have also been successful, but the surprise breakout of this year's Helldivers 2 and its unique approach to a live service shooter prompted PC Gamer's Evan Lahti to ask to what extent developers should be trying to capitalize on whatever's currently trendy.
"If any big companies are listening: Taking risks is actually the least risky thing you can do," Yano said in a recent PC Gamer roundtable interview on the State of PC Gaming. His argument: "People just want novelty. If you see a strange flavor of ice cream, you're gonna try that ice cream. I want to try the weird ice cream. I'm just saying—the pineapple mint sorbet I had the other day was incredible."
The roundtable also included Larian's publishing director Michael Douse, who said that "the output of this industry is not defined by trends—I think the output defines the trends, the trends don't define the output." He conceded that there are now loads of deckbuilders in Slay the Spire's wake, but argued that those will continue even after they're no longer trendy. "For example, the extraction shooter has become established. They're always going to make those for the rest of time now. They're always gonna make deckbuilding games," he said.
Earlier in the conversation Yano said that Mega Crit's tiny team hadn't given any thought to creating or popularizing a genre with Slay the Spire. The game was simply born out of his frustration with how slow most card games felt, and that they typically weren't built to be singleplayer. "The expectation for a card game was that it has to be PvP, and I didn't think that was true," he said. "The only way to prove anything on the internet is to do it yourself, so we just made a game."
Douse pointed to Slay the Spire as a key example of a different sort of trend in modern PC gaming, one divorced from genre labels: what he calls "hyper-engaging games."
"We're seeing more people super into specific games and finding communities in those games," he said. "That's a cool thing, right? … There's a trend of hyper-engaging games at work. We made a hyper-engaging game. Traditional logic is don't make it hyper-engaging. Make it broad so you can pick it up off the shelf."
"Oh no," Yano said. "We went all-in."
Douse said that games like Slay the Spire "are completely unbothered by any notions of casualization or trying to create something for an audience beyond your own audience." He pointed to recent hit Balatro, a new deckbuilder that sold more than a million copies in less than a month.
"Balatro's completely unbothered by any notion of what it 'should' be, and is really just focusing on what it can be and what you want to make. We're definitely going to see more of that in the PC space," Douse said.
Our 2024 State of PC Gaming roundtable touched on a range of other topics, from the influence of Slay the Spire to the current use of AI in games to the biggest trends in PC gaming over the past year. You can check out the full conversation in the embeds above and below, or find PC Gamer Chat Log wherever you get your podcasts. You may also be interested in Slay the Spire 2, which was announced after this discussion was recorded. It's due out in 2025.
I have little nostalgia for this game, as I only played the game a few times at a friend's; that was it. I am fine with either option.So here's an interesting conundrum: say you have a much beloved older videogame from another country getting a remake. Do you
A) preserve the original localization, leaving in localized jokes, added dialogue, potentially offensive material, etc, to remake the version of the game that was released over here
Or
B) produce a more accurate retranslation, making the localized game truer to the original, but significantly changing the version of the game that was released before, effectively censoring out pitentially offensive material and changing characters?
This post is about Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
Why does making the translation closer to the original necessarily mean censoring potentially offensive material? Couldn't the more accurate translation be more offensive?So here's an interesting conundrum: say you have a much beloved older videogame from another country getting a remake. Do you
A) preserve the original localization, leaving in localized jokes, added dialogue, potentially offensive material, etc, to remake the version of the game that was released over here
Or
B) produce a more accurate retranslation, making the localized game truer to the original, but significantly changing the version of the game that was released before, effectively censoring out pitentially offensive material and changing characters?
This post is about Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
I remember the first time I played God of War 3 there was a jump that I really struggled to make. I had gotten through the entire game until that point without a single death. I had fought Hades for the first time without even taking a hit. I spent probably 20 minutes trying to make this one jump because the camera was awkwardly positioned and I was having a lot of trouble judging the distance.Difficulty options should effect all aspects of the game.
This is inspired by Tales of Kenzara: Zau which has your standard three difficulty options. The descriptions explain that these settings only affect combat and do NOT effect hazard damage.
But "hazard damage" means you die if you just touch a spike or a lava pool or some mystery cloud gas chasing you.
So there are these platforming sections where you gotta jump, dash, break walls, etc- execute this precise string of inputs. The trickiest is with gliding and flying so you're messing with gravity. You know the drill. But some of these sequences are long- sure, many in optional challenge areas, but a couple in the main game. And you screw up once and you gotta start over.
So why should I be able to lower the difficulty to get through the combat parts but there's nothing I can do to prevent having to start a whole big sequence of platforming actions.
Heck even for the optional parts this should be the case because there are also optional combat arenas but I can lower the difficulty for combat.
It's just inconsistent. Especially since for this game in particular, the combat is actually easy and the actual challenging parts are the platforming, the thing I can't have difficulty options for.
Ok so how would you handle an "easy" options for falling on spikes and such? Well there's the rewind feature that I've seen on old Nintendo games being played on the Switch. Or add some more checkpoints. Or.. I dunno, it ain't my job lol. But either way it would mean actually implementing something and not just changing the formula for health bar sponginess. And I get it's more dev time and all that but if it's already acceptable to call out games for lack of accessibility it's fair to call this out too I think.
In this instance specifically, the tutorial Goombas are cat-calling Goombella in the English version of the game, when no such thing was happening in the Japanese version of the gameWhy does making the translation closer to the original necessarily mean censoring potentially offensive material? Couldn't the more accurate translation be more offensive?
Fuck the anti-woke. Most of them never touched a Paper Mario game to begin with. If this game didn't get a re-release, those fools would have been focused on something else. They're parasites with nothing better to do in life.The Japanese version is doing transphobia as a plot point, which ironically has trans people excited and the anti-woke crowd mad
Yes I remember this lol. Maybe not the same jump and I certainly wasn't blazing through combat on hardest difficulty or anything but I do remember pop-ups asking me to lower the difficulty for things I can't change so my experience with Kenzera probably re-awakened that embedded memory.I remember the first time I played God of War 3 there was a jump that I really struggled to make. I had gotten through the entire game until that point without a single death. I had fought Hades for the first time without even taking a hit. I spent probably 20 minutes trying to make this one jump because the camera was awkwardly positioned and I was having a lot of trouble judging the distance.
After like my 5th death I got a pop-up asking me if I wanted to lower the difficulty. Then I got the same pop up again every couple of times that I died on this jump. Not only did it feel insulting, it also wouldn't have helped because changing the difficulty only changed combat difficulty, and I wasn't having any issues with the combat. I didn't find the combat to be challenging at all even though I was playing on Titan difficulty, but this 1 fucking jump had ground me to a halt and it felt like the game was laughing at me.
"Oh you didn't think I was hard enough? What now *****? Want to lower the difficulty you big baby? SIKE!"
Ideal situation would be to consult with the original game lead designer and come to a solution that just made sense.So here's an interesting conundrum: say you have a much beloved older videogame from another country getting a remake. Do you
A) preserve the original localization, leaving in localized jokes, added dialogue, potentially offensive material, etc, to remake the version of the game that was released over here
Or
B) produce a more accurate retranslation, making the localized game truer to the original, but significantly changing the version of the game that was released before, effectively censoring out pitentially offensive material and changing characters?
This post is about Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
No need to feel like that, as the game’s camera system was generally meant to favor cinematic styling more than playability. The difficulty prompt was a clear design oversight, but I am kinda wondering what jump that was since I played a lot of that game. Guessing the giant cube section?I remember the first time I played God of War 3 there was a jump that I really struggled to make. I had gotten through the entire game until that point without a single death. I had fought Hades for the first time without even taking a hit. I spent probably 20 minutes trying to make this one jump because the camera was awkwardly positioned and I was having a lot of trouble judging the distance.
After like my 5th death I got a pop-up asking me if I wanted to lower the difficulty. Then I got the same pop up again every couple of times that I died on this jump. Not only did it feel insulting, it also wouldn't have helped because changing the difficulty only changed combat difficulty, and I wasn't having any issues with the combat. I didn't find the combat to be challenging at all even though I was playing on Titan difficulty, but this 1 fucking jump had ground me to a halt and it felt like the game was laughing at me.
"Oh you didn't think I was hard enough? What now *****? Want to lower the difficulty you big baby? SIKE!"
I don't remember exactly where the jump was. It definitely wasn't that far into the game, I think it might have been in the caverns in chapter 3.No need to feel like that, as the game’s camera system was generally meant to favor cinematic styling more than playability. The difficulty prompt was a clear design oversight, but I am kinda wondering what jump that was since I played a lot of that game. Guessing the giant cube section?