Can’t say I share your experience with either game but I can understand it doesn’t work for everyone. Personally, I can’t really imaging playing this, Kao the Kangaroo or old Tomb Raider titles without tank controls for example.

To be clear, your comment is exactly what I meant - you tried and don’t like it, that’s absolutely fine. There’s plenty of games I couldn’t get into due to controls or mechanics so I feel you. On the other hand, I met people who refuse to even try to engage with certain mechanics and that’s what I’m not a fan of. I’m all for remakes/remasters/rereleases updating things to let more people enjoy the old thing and hope this will be the case with Croc. And hey, even if they change something in a way I don’t like, there’s always* the classic version.

* Though not always an official way to get it.

Ah, I thought people had some specific issues besides the game having tank controls. Fair enough.

I’m not going to begrudge someone for not liking a control scheme (unless their only reason is not wanting to learn how to play differently) but I do think some people dislike it without even giving it a fair shake. The thing is, these games were designed with this control scheme in mind and switching to a modern one can be detrimental to the experience (compare playing REmake with and without tank controls, the latter makes navigation and avoiding enemies much easier).

Oh well, everyone has their own dislikes.

Edit: I read a bit more and apparently the game always had an option to play with some kind of “modern” controls when using a controller with sticks? I’m guessing they’ll probably polish those.

I totally agree. I just don’t have much expectations towards big publishers anymore, I guess. Not many approach the topic of remakes/remasters from the point of view of celebrating their history unfortunately. Heck, we had multiple instances of publishers removing the old versions from sale just to push people to the new one.

Low effort or not, companies (and many players to be honest) rarely care about their legacy.

As much as I like this idea I don’t think many publishers would look at it and said anything other than “yeah, not worth the money”. We probably have a higher chance for the classic versions landing on GoG than being added as a freebie to a remake - they want you to play the new shiny thing, not the old one after all (that and no need to provide support to the old version).

I’ve seen a lot of comments about the controls and I don’t really get it. I’ve played through both games about two years ago, I think, and didn’t have any problems with either of them. Maybe I’m just used to the jank due to playing a lot of older games but I remember both titles playing fine.

I’m curious how they’ll modernize the controls. The little gameplay present in this teaser looks pretty close to the original and I don’t think they talked about this in detail. Whatever they’ll do I just hope it’ll allow people to play and enjoy this little gem. It deserves it.

I feel like that should be the default stance. One thing that gives me hope is the early access release - there’s a chance they’re approaching the game seriously and will use it to make something great.

Maybe so. Also, I reread the article and there are more mentions of PC than I initially thought. I just kind of glanced over them between all the talk about Xbox, a term that’s also used in regards to Windows gaming (something I forgot when I posted this).

They could also not do anything at all and leave those players on their own. Sure, it would be great if all of those options were available from the start but most of MS’s work on accessibility wasn’t developed back then. At least they can be used with PCs and should be compatible with their future consoles.

I haven’t used Windows in a while now so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong but it always felt like PCs were a bit of an afterthought for Microsoft. I know it changed somehow but have no idea how much so my random guess would be: it’s simply be a case of “lets market these with our main gaming product: consoles”.

Same here. While I’m very critical of Microsoft and tend to avoid a lot of things they’re involved in their continuous work on improving accessibility is one thing I’ve been really impressed with. I hope this approach will become more and more prevalent in both the gaming industry and in general as well.

This looks really cool. I hope they can pull this off since I’m really itching to play a sims-like again. It’ll probably fry my PC but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.

Edit: There’s a free character studio available on Steam to play around with.

I focused on game companies since that’s what’s this article is about but yeah, that’s true.

Sometimes I forget how unprofessional the game industry still is or how little respect people have for well being of others. I’d like to say I’m surprised but that would require having some expectations towards those companies.

I hope more VAs speak up about stuff like this so we can have some real changes.

It’s a retribution by the mob because of what he did in the first game. I’ll put it in spoilers just in case:

I’m not saying whether it is or isn’t well written, I haven’t played enough to have an informed opinion on the game. All I’m saying is, some people like it well enough they have no problem treating it as a fun single-player experience with real people running in the background.

So are a lot of single-player games. Players running around in the background just add some semblance of “dynamic life” to the world. There’s also the possibility of “well, I’m not playing with people right now but I could if I really wanted to”.

I’m not saying that your perspective is wrong on that (I tend to bounce between the two views for example) but for some people just being in the same world as other players provides enough dynamism to make it feel more interesting than playing completely on your own.

That depends. If an MMO is well written (as FFXIV and ESO are for many) then it doesn’t make much of a difference. Additionally, all to other people running around make the world feel a bit more alive compared to scripted NPCs, even if one doesn’t participate in the actual group content.

I can’t say much about the final version since I didn’t play much of it yet but I do remember some fun ideas being lost during the development. I also remember not vibing much with the new lore & introduction but that could possibly change whenever I take some time to finally experience the game.

I guess I could ask since you’ve mentioned Frackin’ Universe. I’ve seen some mods trying to bring various parts of the old features back, do you know if any of them managed a decent mix of old and new vision of the project?

Hell yeah, Starbound!

I tend to go back to one of the beta versions from time to time so it’s interesting to see the final one - it’s both extremely familiar and pretty different at the same time. It might not be as good of a product as Terraria but I always had a soft spot for this game.

I doubt I can provide any tips for this version but I hope you have fun with it.

Not really. This isn’t about completely preventing publishers from adding account systems etc. (even if that would be ideal), it’s about publishers removing your ability to play games after they the shut down the servers. The former would hopefully be a side effect of a potential law change/ruling but the main point is keeping games playable after the official support ends.

In your example it could be removal of the sign in requirement once the account system is down but not necessarily preventing them from existing in the first place.