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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2801 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 26, 2024

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 Pokemon Pal 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 pokemon pals 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 Pokedex Paldeck 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.

Mordhau and Yakuza 0 and Nebuchadnezzar. Mordhau is frustrating/intense. Yakuza is fun. Nebuchadnezzar is meditative.

Anyone know if there are mods to restore cut trans substory from Yakuza 3? I want to play through without CW modifications.

Man, I envy you, Yakuza 0 is a fucking experience and a half, I would gladly wipe my memories of it just to go through it blind again. Loved every second of it.

I'm a relative newfriend to the series (started with 0), qrd on the substory?

There was a un-PC substory about a trans something in Yakuza 3, I hear. The remaster removed or edited it. I’d like to mod it back in or address any other bowdlerizations.

For what it's worth, the substories in Yakuza 3 are almost universally bad. So you're not really missing out on much regardless. I would say it's not until 5 or 6 where you will see the substories once again hit the same level of consistent quality they had in Yakuza 0.

Mordhau became an awful experience about a few days from launch, with sweaty players contorting like an epileptic ballerina to gently tap the side of your ear with a longsword swung at 0.1 m/s and doing full damage (a decapitation).

Plus even what I normally consider an acceptable ping, about 100, makes high level play impossible for me. Sucks to live in a country that doesn't have servers for anything but CS and Valorant I guess.

If only the devs had made damage dependent on velocity/momentum instead of the current absurd spin to win crap.

But I also happen to know enough about actual medieval warfare/HEMA to cry in agony at how weapons and armor are modeled, beyond my tolerance for simplification in a video game. Maybe I'll buy Chivalry 2 next, it seems far more fun.

I used to play Chivalry 1, and by god you never gave Mordhau a fair shake because it's miles and leagues better than Chivalry 1. And Chivalry 2 is not. By comparison, the pirouettes and contortions are extremely subdued in Mordhau, and it's relatively few players who rely on them. And the devs are still active in preventing those. And if it's the damage model that turns you off, then Chivalry is no-go, because it uses pretty much exactly the same design.

Yes it's not a HEMA simulator. There's Hellish Quart for that. And Mount-&-Blade-like velocity-based damage models do even more poorly in multiplayer, where any ping above 0 means the damage you take and deal is pretty much randomized. Mordhau, even if it doesn't attempt to model realistic Harnischfechten, is just a gem of gameplay. Difficult, sure - there's a high skill ceiling. But that also means there's a lot to dig into if you appreciate mechanical depth. Can veteran players lay your armored knight flat with nothing but a bollocks dagger or a horse turd? Yes. Just gang up with your teammates and shank them in the back.

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