I would love to see a Palworld update that changes the balls to cubes. Same animations and effects, same textures, just stretched over a cube.

There’s definitely something special about that era of games. The community would really shine and make creative stuff with relatively limited tech.

https://youtube.com/@excavation_goldsrc

This is the mod that’s blown me away the most. They somehow made the limitations of the Goldsource engine look stylish, all the while having some incredible animations and model design. Unfortunately development is temporarily paused but hopefully they pick it up again soon.

Whats funny is that most 20 year old multiplayer games today (at least on PC) are still perfectly playable because the server tech was given to the community, at launch. Battlefield 2 hasn’t been available for purchase anywhere officially in well over a decade, there’s still a dedicated, albiet small community.

I understand that with large, persistent worlds, it’s hard to release that server tech, but at least some form of it should be published. Ie, a smaller variant that maybe just lets a couple people join up as a co-op party, rather than dozens of people running around a large map at random, like in The Crew.

Ive seen some genuinely impressive GoldSource mods pop up in recent years.

The PS3 fat could only read PS2 disks because it had stripped down PS2 hardware included. It was effectively a PS2/3 combined. This was part of what drove the cost up, so they gutted that hardware from the slim.

PS4s can’t read PS3 disks because the PS3 used a bespoke PowerPC based chipset that was a colossal pain in the ass to develop for. So for the PS4 to have backwards compatibility, they would have had to either A, include PS3 hardware in the PS4 (expensive) or B, create an efficient software translation layer/built in emulator (see “pain in the ass”).

From what I have heard, they smartened up with the PS5. It’s basically just a faster PS4. At it’s core, it’s based on very similar hardware, so it’s easy to make PS4 games run without issue, but the boost in performance allows games designed specifically to take advantage of it.

Good point, I shouldn’t have used the world ‘literally.’ I was just trying to make the point that there are plenty of creative ways where tremendous amounts of money could end up back in someones pocket when by all means it should have gone elsewhere.

And yes, your example is perfectly believable and I wouldn’t at all be shocked if that kind of thing happened frequently.

As a guy who still plays those old school FPS games, they’re for me. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Ghost Recon Wildlands, but the og GR with the Heroes Unleashed mod is unmatched. Ready or Not is visceral, but SWAT 4 feels better and has infinitely better AI.

I personally think it’s a cool way to increase situational awareness while using a scope. Also, being an obvious callback to the old Delta Force games, there’s definitely some nostalgia there. I at the very least hope it’s an option that can be toggled on or off.

I’ll never support Bungie again. I bought D1 and D2 before it went free to play, only to have the game I bought removed from the face of the Earth.

Ace of Spades which, for the record, is open source (in the form of OpenSpades), totally free, has mod support, and self hosted servers.

This specifically is a bit of an open secret afaik. There are a few semi prominent examples of big studios pouring a bunch of money into junk, not advertising it or just skipping theatres entirely, then watching it sink.

I had a conversation with my sister about that recently.

The amount of shows and movies that have $100,000,000+ budgets is rising, yet more and more of them feature very limited sets, small casts of mostly mid range talent, and a dozen executive producers all putting up their own money (this is all especially prominent with big shows on streaming networks, cough Star Trek cough The Acolyte)

Here’s my comparison: a group of 10 investors come out and announce they’re spending a billion dollars to develop a new luxury car. They drum it up as being the next big thing. Then, when it comes out, it’s about as nice and luxurious as a base model Toyota Camry. Fine, but not “a billion dollars” fine. Immediately, everyone would be wondering where the hell that money went? There’s definitely a chance it was just squandered, but you have to wonder. When you have a group of private investors with executive power over the project, what goes on behind closed doors?

For all we know, they’re literally just passing massive checks in a circle to one another to say “yes, it says right here in our bank records that we spent a combined $100,000,000”, meanwhile only 25% actually goes into the production, and they pocket the rest. Then, when the flock of people have to come and check out the new megaproject, all they need to recoup is a few million more than they spent (far less than the perceived budget), and they can run for the hills.

Anywho, crackpot theory time over. But think about it, if my simple brain can think this stuff up, why can’t the hollywood bigwigs, who actually have the capital to make it happen?

Most of my favourite movies from when I was a kid are still great movies for me as an adult.

I would bet my next paycheck this is not the case for any kid who grows up seeing this movie. A good kids movie should age with you.

Dusk. Quake meets Evil Dead. One of the best games I’ve played in years. It’s definitely more of a straight up shooter than a horror game, but the themes/setting/art style nail the spooktober vibe. I replay it every autumn and always have a great time

Underrail

I also remember it being in a pretty rough state early on, all the more reason 2 weeks of testing is a joke.

Although, one thing CoD has going for it, each game changes so little they really don’t need a beta. They’re almost like sports games in that regard, they may as well be released as updates instead of new titles.

Right. Fair enough. But, as another user said, I can upgrade that PC. I’ve technically had the “same PC” since like 2015. At this point, there are no pieces of the original left, but I never went out and spend $1000 on a new rig up front.

Also, that still doesn’t make consoles look amy better. Because, when the PS3 became obsolete, and I went and got a PS4, what happened to my PS3 library? It’s still locked to my PS3. Even if we did have to go buy new computers every 7 years, they’s still all run the original Doom as well as newer games, and everything in between. All this, while also being able to file my taxes.

Thats not what’s going on here. CoD has for the past few releases run an open beta for 2 to 3 weeks, a month or two ahead of release. Buying this package lets you into that 2-3 week beta a week early, letting you get 3-4 weeks of playtime. You can still get into this beta for completely free, just wait a week and don’t buy the game.

Not trying to defend Activision here, cause I still think CoD is a shadow of its former self and these “betas” are nothing more than a demo, but people seem to have the wrong idea about how Activision runs them.

I’ve been saying this for years. I remember playing the Planetside 2 beta, it ran for months. It was actually used for bug/stability testing, fixing networking issues, balancing, etc etc etc. It was an incredibly important step in developing a multiplayer game.

These aren’t betas, they’re demos that at most will help them do a limited network stress test. The amount of data they can get from 2 weeks of feedback is nowhere near enough to do any real bug fixes or balance changes.

What’s worse is that now, any game that does have a long alpha or beta period is accused of squatting in early access.

Especially now that there are maybe 2 or 3 “killer apps” per the life cycle of a console at this point. Why would I pay $600 to buy a console, just for 3 exclusives?

If there was an entire panel of awesome exclusives like back in the PS3/360 era, it would make more sense. But as it stands, the amount of good games on PC just dwarfs what’s on any console.