Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Not sure if people here play vidya, but I've seen scattered mentions so why not, this is now a vidya subthread. Have you played anything recently?
I've recently sunk an embarrassing amount of hours into Palworld, the "Pokemon at home" game that continues to break all-time records on Steam (second only to PUBG atm) and make Twitter seethe ever since it released into (very) early access a week ago. It's very janky and barebones, but the
PokemonPal designs are imo solid and the core idea is incredibly fun. I wanted a more mature take on Pokemon and/or a proper open-world game in the franchise for decades - and judging by the absolute fecal tornadoes all over Twitter, Steam forums, 4chan etc. I'm far from the only one - and this game, while obviously being a parody, very much delivers both in one package.Despite the obvious, obvious Pokemon parallels, the core gameplay is more reminiscent of ARK and other survival basebuilding games, with the key distinctions being 1) real-time combat, 2) the player being an entity on their own with weapons and shit instead of just a walking roster of pokemon, 3) base management revolving around putting your
pokemonpals to work: some can chop or mine, Fire-types kindle ore furnaces, crops are planted by Grass-types and watered by Water-types, humanoid ones craft or harvest with their hands, etc. etc.There are human NPCs in the game too, and if decades ago you've ever wondered what would happen if you threw a pokeball at a human, Palworld's answer is pretty decisive. Call me a rube but this pleases me greatly. American Pokemon, indeed.
The (Japanese, ironically) devs are a proper Ragtag Bunch of Misfits if 4chan translations of their JP TV interviews are to be believed. Bonus points for their (similarly unverified) justifications for guns and the typical current-year "Type 1/Type 2" character creator.
Of course I cannot fail to mention that the #69 entry of the
PokedexPaldeck is, I shit you not, a giant pink sex lizard complete with a heart-shaped crotch plate, whose ingame description explicitly mentions its taste for humans. My first encounter was having my base raided by a bunch of them and it was hysterical, I dislike furries/scalies but I cannot bring myself to disrespect such a mind-bogglingly based approach. Salazzle ain't shit.The fact of how shameless the game is about itself probably says a lot about our gaming society in the current year, but personally I enjoy both the game itself and the controversy it generates. It's already been accused of everything under the sun, from the obvious animal abuse/slavery complaints, to blatantly ripping off Pokemon, to using AI for its models (I mean, take one look at Lovander above and tell me that is AI generated). Be warned - it is extremely janky and definitely not for everyone, it's in dire need of fixes ASAP, but the core gameplay feels incredibly fresh and I pray devs (having become millionaires overnight) will keep their collective nose to the grindstone. Game Freak urgently needs competition like 15 years ago.
Thanks to completing my exams and only being assigned half hours at my job (a bunch of residents joined, so they're overstaffed), I've been no-lifing Escape From Tarkov.
Great game, albeit bad for your cardiovascular and mental health.
For the unacquainted, imagine if PUBG worked with you bringing your own gear into a match, and being able to take what you found out, or spend money to buy new gear. Far more hardcore in mechanics, map design and realism than anything else on the market, including loose copies like Warzone. If you die with that meta gun and armor worth a day's grinding, sucks to suck, you're not getting it back, unless you paid for "insurance", where a friendly neighborhood armed hobo combs the map for what's leftover and delivers the dregs for a fee.
It uses realistic ballistics, real guns and aftermarket equipment (for the most part), and a more in depth medical system than the overwhelming majority of non-modded games out there. A map can take days to learn to navigate. A single bullet can end your day, even if you're a sweaty Chad with 4000 hours in the game, lobbed by a panicked newbie who decided the correct thing to do when being confronted by the Terminator was to spray it with the equivalent of BBs. I don't play it solo these days, far too stressful, but I've made enough random Discord buddies that I can throw together a reasonably competent fireteam and apply some real world tactics. All those American soldiers stationed in Korea are good for something other than keeping NK at bay, eh?
Now, excuse me while I die from a stroke after seeing Amoxicillin used as a painkiller, or a simple vein transilluminator for IV cannulation exist as an item worth more in cash than some of the best guns money can buy.
And of course, some Total War Warhammer 3, for my Aztec Lizardmen fighting Rodents of Unusual Size fix.
Maybe some Arma 3, as the Zeus, so I can use real human beings as stand-ins for my childhood toy soldiers (it's pretty much DND with guns, or a COD campaign being built on the fly by a GM desperate to stop Arma 3's physics and AI from launching players into the stratosphere).
I am looking forward to a game called Grey Zone Warfare, which seems to be strongly inspired by Tarkov but far more intent on doing everything better, with less technical debt and Russian gamedev incompetence/jank. I am cautiously optimistic, and who knows, maybe I'll get my name in the credits for helping design their medical system, since the devs were kind enough to reach out to me when I made an enormous effort post on the tradeoffs between realism and gameplay when it comes to medical systems in hardcore FPS milsims like theirs.
Genuine question - what is the appeal of Tarkov? 3k hours of Dota burned me out on PVP forever but my entire IRL circle is completely addicted to it, every new wipe they sink a month or two into it uninterrupted. Is it the competitive aspect? The "ok ONE more raid" grinding/progression? The random loot? Losing your shit on death so you're forced to actually tryhard? Subjectively I noticed a big overlap of Tarkov with Path of Exile players so surely the repetitive autistic grinding must be part of the appeal, also the hate/love relationship with the game for most of them is almost 1:1 with Dota (I suppose that's what you mean by "bad for your health" too). Every single one of them hates the stupid janky-ass game but cannot stop playing it whenever available.
Tarkov accommodates a lot of different playstyles, but the main appeal can be summed up by:
You can snipe from hundreds of meters from a bush. You can take an SMG loaded with armor piercing bullets and bumrush anything you hear. You can play solo or as a team, and that doesn't change matchmaking. You can run into a single scared newbie, or a stampeding herd of 5 players more coordinated than SEAL Team 6 who brought ten grenades to a gunfight and prefer to clear rooms without ever stepping in.
You can be as brave and homicidal, or as cowardly and quiet as you like. Neither is a strictly dominant strategy, once you know the msps and rotations.
For me, it's the thrill of outsmarting other players and putting a bullet in their head, even if I'm average in a fight. It also lets me be a firearms nerd while stuck in countries where I can't own one I care about.
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