chameleon

I didn’t play the demo, so I was a bit surprised to find it has less in common with Link’s Awakening and Castlevania than you might think

To me, the demo felt like it was setting up something resembling more of a Zelda game, even though the demo itself wasn’t very Zelda due to its length. Which kinda made it worse to me, I thought I would get Legend of Mouse: Oracle of Slightly Souls and unexpectedly got Mouse Souls for the Gameboy Color.

That is a game I could ultimately find enjoyment in, but at 5-ish hours into the game, I was incredibly frustrated by the difference in expectations vs what I just played. The Zelda influence does show up a bit more later in the game as dungeon/world design improves a bit, but it remains thinner than I would’ve preferred. The “Souls mechanics” can mostly be turned off via the modifiers menu, but that doesn’t really turn the game into what I would’ve preferred either.

For the right person, this is going to be a GotY candidate. I’m glad I did play it through to the end, but it’s too soulsy for me to truly appreciate it. I will say that the soundtrack very well might be my soundtrack of the year though; easily Jake Kaufman’s finest work (and the OST is pay-what-you-want on Bandcamp!).

The default is that Valve does moderation, and if you don’t opt-out of it, they consider those kinds of topics to be completely on-topic and valid, removing the reports. All of the relevant Steamworks pages aimed at publishers (eg Steam Community) are publicly available and are really enough to blame Valve for the whole state of things.

Even if a publisher opts-out of Valve moderation, they don’t have the tools to deal with sockpuppets or organized attacks, and being banned from one game forum just means those same accounts move elsewhere. Valve could absolutely deal with it by doing community-wide bans, but they don’t.

There’s strong indications that there is going to be some minor but technically base-breaking rebalancing. Getting rid of “space casinos” (quality asteroid upcycling) and platform thruster stacking was mentioned as being ready over a year ago, but they didn’t want to break existing bases at that time. This is their last good moment for it.

With the game being out for the better part of a day now, I gotta admit, the much less positive Giant Bomb review is by far the one closest to my experience.

As far as I’m concerned, this game would have been ever so much better if Dark Souls never existed. You can turn off most “souls-like mechanics” via modifiers, but just about anything to make the experience easier turns off all achievements, which is a not-so-silent judgment from the developers for doing it. Boss runbacks are looooong, but if you’re willing to disable achievements, you can have a bonus checkpoint before every boss. So the devs really want you to do runbacks, but I struggle to see what they add to the game. Basically the same complaint as Silksong but I am even more tired of them by now, and the runbacks are worse.

Currency loss and estus flasks plasma vials don’t really add to the game, either.

I ended up wanting an online pseudonymous identity as well as an offline real-life identity, which leads to needing multiple phone numbers when things are tied to said number. That’s extremely annoying to manage, especially with Signal’s current activity and update policies that essentially require you to keep a phone in a drawer, charge it and log into it every so often or risk losing your entire account due to inactivity, as only the mobile device counts for that purpose (this might supposedly be changing).

In that particular scenario, I don’t really care if my least-favorite three-letter-agency or law enforcement can link my identities. It’s a nice bonus if they can’t, but not an absolutely required feature. The main worry is the person on the other end trivially learning it. But the person on the other end might have a different set of worries that makes Signal one of the few available options for them.

That said, Telegram also requires a phone number and has exactly the same issue, so this is a rather weird thread to bring that up.

Funny thing is this particular bill also applies semi-retroactively. The original version was worded

The following shall apply only for server-connected games published for sale on or after January 1, 2027

but in the April 6 revision that ultimately advanced, that was changed to:

The following shall apply only to a digital game available for purchase on or after January 1, 2027

I’m heavily in favor of SKG, but this particular bill isn’t workable on this schedule. It’s not what SKG has been petitioning for.

Even Sonic feels like it deserves so much better. It’s been almost 25 years of shipping 6.5/10 reviewed games, just a little bit too unfinished and just a little bit too janky for anyone to really recommend. Sales figures look OK but they’re boosted hard by being thrown in the bargain bin mere months after release.

This is of course with the exception of racing game spinoffs, which are a protest buy for when Nintendo messes up Mario Kart. And last decade’s Sonic Mania, which they didn’t make.