Starfield did this the right way, just as you are suggesting. it’s the only game I’ve seen so far that does it, but your character body exists on a wheel of buff, slender, thicker, etc. you can adjust every little part of this to get a truly unique character. i believe there were also at least 4 voice options. the rest of the game was meh, but maybe other games will start doing it that way. i think inclusion is still a very new concept in gaming, everyone is trying new things, and i appreciate the effort. it’ll get there.
I definitely have to say, Body Type A/Body Type B definitely feels like a groan-worthy growing pain that will be ironed out sooner or later. It’s just disappointing that we have to resort to such awkward terms that mislead players about how much variety across the gender spectrum is actually being offered. It almost feels like a vegan menu that still heavily uses animal byprdouct.
This almost makes me want to buy Starfield to support a proper way to revamp gender selection, but it’s going to need the same amount of work that FO76 getting it from how it was at launch to the awesome experience it is now for me to dip my toes in that…
The Sims 4 actually added a similar approach to character creation about 2 years ago, but very different kind of game with a very different market
Off the top of my head it has options for male presenting body type, female presenting body type, sliders for fat and muscle (and you can generally reshape most of the body) and the available clothing and hairstyles got sorted into masculine and feminine with I believe more traditionally gender neutral stuff getting placed into both, then for biological purposes there’s “can pee standing up/cannot pee standing up” and “can impregnate/can be impregnated” It defaults to Male/Female defaults but makes it easy to customize, and a good mix of default townies (NPCs) are all over the spectrum.
They also recently added more complex relationship and romance preferences, so sims can be sexually bi but romantically straight for example, but also expanded to allow various levels of openness to relationships as well as poly relationships
Further, just because a name like that came be “copyrighted” doesn’t mean the rest of the game isn’t lmao.
If I made Nuclear D.C., a post apocalyptic game set it the Fallout universe in Washington D.C. as a followup to Fallout 3, I wouldn’t magically be okay just because it’s set in a “real” place.
spoilerThe frame story of Returns, where Guybrush is telling an account of his life story to his son, is that a filter we’re now supposed to retroactively apply to the whole series? The end of this game, another “it’s all just Disneyland” ending like Revenge had, felt very pointedly like a cover-up. The whole story is low-key building up this theme of Guybrush actually being a terrible person and his quest being both personally unhealthy and harmful to those around him, with little things like the game silently marking off the checklist of horrible things he did on the how-to-be-evil pamphlet he got from LeChuck and big things like Elaine confronting him with his actions while they travel together, so when the ending turns into such an anti-climactic non-sequitur it reads like he can’t bring himself to tell his son the truth of what happened and you hope it’s because he actually gave up the quest and knows that isn’t the story kids want to be told but fear it’s because shit got real in a different sense and he doesn’t want Boybrush to view him in that light. With that in mind, now I can’t stop wondering if that’s what the Carnival of the Damned always was: an act of self-censorship by the hypothetical storyteller.
Love all the monkey Island games, my sister and I played 3 together at the same pc when we were kids and it is a fond memory, have since played all the others.
I remember reading a write up by the creator essentially saying that each game sort of reflected where the small team of developers were in their life at the time of each game, from the first game being young and ambitious to third being marriage themed and the most recent having child raising themes. I am paraphrasing badly but was neat insight either way.
My only gripe about the game is that whenever I inevitably use lines from the game in my real life it’s exceedingly rare anyone has any idea what I am talking about
One thing that always irks me with character customization is how often games have more customization options for girl characters. I have always assumed that developers only allocate so much time and resources to character creators and call it a day.
Hah that’s true. I thought it was odd that they mentioned how you could customize genitalia and then they had 2 options for penis’s and only one vagina option. It definitely seemed like an advertising strategy more than anything
I don’t even know why you can choose between circumcised and uncircumcised in that game. It feels like they wanted to add more sex things but didn’t get around to it
If it came across as talking bad about the game/franchise thats not the intent. It’s just rarely mentioned in the crpg mainstream articles I’ve seen over time. Usually Divinity and others are brought up more often.
No no, I just see “Underrated” used a lot about things that really aren’t underrated. It’s become a bit of a pet peeve for me. (Like when someone calls REM an underrated band. Like, they are world renowned. They’re just old and broken up.)
And I’m also pointing out a likely reason for them not being talked about as much as other titles in the same genre. Aside from going through the game with different roles, the first game just doesn’t have a lot of replay value. Not a lot of ‘Choice & Consequence’ or things to discover. There’s your Char and what God you choose to side with in the end. That’s kinda it.
Thanks. The Companion app never seemed to work on my sandboxed Google Play profile on GrapheneOS however. I’ve since found Golden Cheetah which is a native Linux program and totally free. Zwift raising their price was the final straw for me to move on and I’m grateful for it.
GC works perfectly on Linux Mint with my Garmin USB ANT+ dongle, Garmin heart rate strap, and retains all the functionality with my Zwift Hub trainer if anyone is curious.
It was good in many ways. And it expands on dead space in many ways mechanically, it just didn’t follow through in some aspects.
The guns are cool and there’s a very satisfying melee system.
But the melee system is overpowered, which means monsters are less scary. The sound-based stealth sections where you go through rooms full of blind monsters that allegedly react to sound, have the monsters being completely deaf to melee kills, which means you can just walk up to them one by one and clear the room.
And you’re right about the story. The game should have had LORE, but it’s just the bare minimum generic excuse to have a horror setting.
It was just what I understood went wrong with the game.
That it’s a good game on it’s own premise, but when compared to the games it was supposed to be compared with, it just seemed mediocre. It’s just hard competing with an established franchise. Especially one that is as beloved as DS is, not to mention that DS’s own reboot also fell short as the OG games are still as grand as ever.
With exception of the graphics looking a little dated, Deadspace 1 holds up just fine even when compared to newer games. From atmosphere to mechanics, UI and story… It’s all perfectly within parameters for the type of game it is.
I think we’re likely gonna see some of same with the Silent Hill 2 Remake. There’s a lot of marks to hit. Even the old tank controls adds to what makes the game intense and updating the combat system to something less clunky could potentially take away from the game rather than improving it.
It doesn’t really even manage that. It’s not bad, there’s a lot to like, but playing it I ran into a lot of stuff I wish was there, but wasn’t.
The story was one thing, but it completely fails at bulding tension. DS1 fills you with adrenaline at regular intervals, but in Callisto Protocol the second I realized the “sound-sensitive” blind enemies don’t react to the noise of melee combat, it was like all the air went out of the balloon.
That’s a perfect microcosm of the whole game. Really neat ideas, really good execution, but only to 90%. And that last 10% matters. A LOT.
The combat system is great, but it doesn’t lean into it at all. The final boss is just a bullet sponge that makes no clever use of any mechanics, and the game is so obsessed with trying to be DS (and TLOU) with boring stealth sections and puzzles.
You end up spending a lot of time wishing combat was happening.
I feel like a Callisto Protocol 2 that leans into the things worked, and fixed just a couple small things that get near working, could be amazing.
Know what was actually really, really good?
The tie in podcast. Great production value, great voice actors, and really great story, character development and pacing!
I grab Calisto Protocol off Epic, but only because it’s free. I watched some reviews and gameplay footage, and it’s…kinda meh. From what I saw of gameplay, the story is a bit reductive, and, unless they fixed it the melee combat is a bit of a joke.
It does have decent atmosphere, cool visuals, etc. The combat system is very good. Much more action game than horror game. The melee system meant that not running out of ammo and being careful with your shots wasn’t as important as in dead space.
It falls short in several disappointing ways. The “stealth” system is a joke. There’s a level where you have to sneak around “blind” monsters that only act on sound, except you can walk right up to them and just melee kill them, LOUDLY, without any of the others reacting.
So the stealth sections are completely trivial.
There’s a pretty interesting enemy in the form of the automated security robots of the prison, except it literally shows up in just the tutorial, where it shows you how to deal with them, but then they’re utterly absent in the rest of the game.
The whole game is really impressive in a couple ways (graphics and animation, the combat system) but it feels like 50% of what was supposed to be in it was cut, and like several mechanics never got implemented.
Sounds a lot like they tried to make a “game like dead space”. But then by trying to imitate that, they necessarily and almost predictably fell short behind the original.
It’s very similar but nowhere near as good. I got it for free on playstation a while back and stopped playing it to go back and play the dead space remake again.
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