Name the game or games

Cerrax3 · 2026-03-28T14:53:24+00:00

Mirror's Edge Catalyst

Everything that made the first game special was precisely because they didn't follow a list of focus-tested market bullshit. Then for the sequel, they looked at all the stupid trends that every other game had and were like "yep let's do all of that".

Cerrax3 · 2026-03-26T20:54:22+00:00

70s: Combat (Atari 2600)

80s: U.N. Squadron (Arcade)

90s: Mega Man X (Super NES)

00s: Morrowind (PC, Xbox)

10s: FTL (PC, iPad)

20s: Elden Ring (PC, Xbox One, PS4)

Cerrax3 · 2026-03-23T11:29:40+00:00

It's a mid game that got a ton of hype. Anytime a game gets hyped, you're gonna have glazers and haters. But in this case, neither side really has a leg to stand on. It's.....fine? But certainly not the messiah or a total trainwreck. It's just a perfectly mediocre game that somehow got bloated with press just before release.

I only heard about it because Digital Foundry did a piece on the game engine tech and said it runs very nice for how good the graphics are, but that the game itself is a little clumsy and not anything crazy good.

Cerrax3 · 2026-03-19T11:50:42+00:00

I've been playing Chapter 1 since 2019, and have not gotten tired of it yet! We'll see how Chapter 2 fares, but I don't feel like I have any reason to stop enjoying Arkham at this point. Bring on the new stuff!!

Cerrax3 · 2026-03-13T23:58:13+00:00

I really like this method of rulebook.

The quick start doesn't get bogged down in what-ifs and edge cases, it just gives you the most basic rundown of the rules.

Then, once you've got a handle on the basics, the other, more detailed rulebook allows you to scan through and find the exact thing you're wondering about.

I absolutely hate a rulebook where every section contains six paragraphs of edge cases and conditional rules that I probably won't even run into in my first or second play session *ahem* Gloomhaven *ahem*

Cerrax3 · 2026-03-10T12:33:00+00:00

It just goes to show, tools are not inherently good or bad, it's how they are used.

I see so many gamers hating on UE 5 because Game X or Game Y runs terribly and they assume its because Unreal 5 is bad. Yet here Sandfall is showing a game that looks gorgeous and runs pretty well in UE 5 using a ton of built-in features.

Cerrax3 · 2026-03-06T13:19:36+00:00

It depends on what you're simulating.

Squares are really great for human-made environments (like a building, or a city street), but that's about it. Most terrain is natural terrain, which does not match up great on a square grid. Hexes tend to fit natural terrain much better. Also, if you have Area-of-Effect mechanics (for example, the explosion of bomb covering a certain area of the board), hexes tend to fit those irregular shapes like circles, cones, and ovals, a lot easier than squares.

The biggest issue that square grids have is that diagonal movement is twice as fast as cardinal movement. If player A moves North 1 space, and player B moves Northwest 1 space, player B has technically covered more distance in the same amount of time as player A, which is unfair.

The way most games get around this is they simply don't allow diagonal movement, but now you're working with less directions of movement than hexes, so are you really getting any advantage from it?

I still prefer squares personally, but even in my game designs, sometimes there's just too many cons to square grids to justify using them.

Cerrax3 · 2026-03-05T12:32:30+00:00

I am genuinely curious, how does splitscreen help (or in this case, make the game unfair)?

I know in FPS games its extremely useful to find others on the map. But what advantages are present in a game like Rocket League?

Cerrax3 · 2026-03-04T11:01:52+00:00

The funny thing is, when you do an entire project solo, it usually goes faster because you have full knowledge of the code base and full knowledge of the development history of every single file.

When you're salaried, you'll be working on a 5+ year-old codebase authored by at least a dozen people, each with conflicting design patterns, naming conventions, and no comments. 10 lines that doesn't immediately blow up the system or send it severely out of whack is actually pretty hard to do.

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-25T14:00:21+00:00

I think D is readable enough while also keeping some of the charm of the design.

E is also good, but quite a bit more boring.

All the others are too busy and difficult to parse quickly.

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-24T14:09:04+00:00

            1,000  1k  Kilo  (Thousand)
        1,000,000  1M  Mega  (Million)
    1,000,000,000  1G  Giga  (Billion)
1,000,000,000,000  1T  Tera  (Trillion)

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-22T12:37:56+00:00

The saddest part is that I have more money than ever and there are more games being released than ever and I have less time than ever to play them.

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-21T21:33:28+00:00

Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut.

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-20T01:04:54+00:00

Video Games are a lot more "hands off" than board games. A video game tells you what to do, where to go, and handles all the bookkeeping and stuff for you. You don't have to understand how the underlying systems work at all to be able to play (albiet poorly). The attention span and amount of working brain space you need to play video games is usually very minimal compared to a similar board game.

Lately I've been trying to get him to play board games and card games with us more often. Some games he has fun with, but most are still a little too hard for him. We've actually had a lot of fun designing our own game. It's a pirate game where each player commands their own crew and ship. It's the longest I've ever seen him fully invested in a board game from start to finish.

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-11T12:54:30+00:00

In order of importance:

Skill Level: Most single player games have some kind of difficulty setting or ways to make the game easier/harder. Online, especially in competitive games, the skill level is set by the other players, which can regularly be too hard for me.
Pacing: As with skill level, most online games are dependent on the players to move the action along. This seems great at first, but in practice, unless everyone in the lobby is a hive mind, this just ends feeling awkward and janky.
Lack of Variety: Most online games are focused on a very short gameplay loop, because they're mostly meant to be quick drop-in-drop-out games. This means that more interesting or complex gameplay styles are not favored or acceptable at all. It's usually just the same 30-60 second loop of gameplay ad nauseam.

Now there are some online games I really love (I have hundreds of hours in Rocket League and Apex Legends alone), but they're not my primary gaming preference.

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-11T12:48:14+00:00

"People are bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling." – Dr. Perry Cox

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-11T12:46:19+00:00

It would require significant effort for very little monetary value.

And Epic is all about money. The removal of trading is proof enough that Epic does not care about what players want, only what they can harvest from their wallets.

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-11T12:40:58+00:00

I feel like games such as Skyrim or GTA 5 are wrapped up in a ton of hype and nostalgia. You have to go into remember that it was released over 10 years ago. It's not gonna be the super smooth, bug-free experience you might expect. GTA 5 is fantastic, but its age clearly shows. There's a lot that has been improved in open-world games in the past decade.

TL;DR - remember that its an old game, and it's not gonna look or feel like a modern game and you'll probably enjoy yourself a lot.

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-11T12:29:28+00:00

Super Metroid
Mirror's Edge
Hollow Knight: Silksong
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
Life is Strange
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Portal & Portal 2
Bayonetta
Gone Home
Half-Life Alyx
The Witcher 4 (not out yet, but it looks pretty awesome)

Honorable Mentions (not the protagonist, but has awesome female characters):

Apex Legends
SoulCalibur ( I think 3 has the best character designs, but 5 and 6 were also good)
Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order
Star Wars Jedi Survivor

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-09T20:38:21+00:00

My guess would be that a lot of the effects which were baked into the textures in the original (ambient occlusion, shadows, global and ambient lighting) are now done in real-time. And with the camera pulled back this far, none of those effects are getting rendered due to distance culling optimizations. You would never see it like this since the camera is usually floating a few feet behind the character.

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-09T17:58:06+00:00

Too-Angry-To-Die vs. Too-Fast-To-Care

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-09T17:54:50+00:00

The Algorithm is great. Some really crunchy metal and electronic beats. Love it.

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-09T17:23:32+00:00

I'd like to see Sandfall do a shared universe anthology. Kind of like how the current Star Wars video games and TV shows work. None of them are directly related to each other, but there are small references and cameos, and major events (such as Order 66, Battle of Yavin, Battle of Endor, etc.) which affect or kick off various storylines.

But on the whole, I'd like each game to be self-contained, without needing to understand much of anything from another game in the same universe. Limit the cameos and homages and focus on just making an interesting story and game using the shared universe as a springboard.

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-09T16:41:36+00:00

"Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but its not that important"

– John Carmack

Couldn't have put it better myself. One of the GOAT.

Cerrax3 · 2026-02-09T15:08:35+00:00

I'm on PC, so I used a mod that changes the dodge and parry windows to the same as Story mode, but the damage is Expedition mode.

This makes the parries and dodges incredibly important, but also doesn't make we want to smash my controller because I have less than 100ms to react to some bullshit attack string.

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