There is literally only one person developing SDV and Haunted Chocolatier. This is literally an impossible statement. There is only ConcernedApe, and he has not announced any cancelation.

Tbh I play the hell out of some Kairosoft games on mobile <_< I love watching my little guys thrive.

BG3 is a huge exception. It’s more popular by far than most games of the sort. And still only two of the dozen gamers I work with has played any of it, and they are both done with it.

all these gamers glowing about how great it is

Where? If you mean online, yeah, online discussion and gaming publications focus on more complex games that more serious gamers are playing. There’s just more to say about them. And news sites are gonna pay more attention to exceptions to the norm like BG3. None of the many gamers in my life are talking about it. If you’re hearing about BG3 and other huge, complex games regularly, it’s because you are spending time in spaces where and with people who care about them. Because it’s not just everywhere.

Oh yeah I know that, it just seems like these type of games are super popular.

I honestly think that’s just your circle. That does not describe the majority of the gamers I know or have known. I have always been in a minority for wanting to do math in my free time and have to find places online to discuss these games because usually nobody else in my life is playing them. Most of the people I know who played BG3 did so because it is popular, and they avoided as much of the math and homework as possible. And most of them are done with it.

There are tons of games that don’t require that sort of knowledge base or study investment. It’s a minority that do. But you’re on Lemmy. This is a self selected community of extra thoughtful nerds. This community is more likely to be excited about games with homework than your average gaming community. I do genuinely love the research part of complex games. I like crafting builds and planning battles. I loved both Divinity Original Sin games and will love BG3 when I get there.

But sometimes I do just want a game for my hands to play while by brain takes a break. That’s why I spent most of the summer with Earth Defense Force 5, a 9/10 space insect exploding experience. Highly recommend it if you don’t want to fuck with the details.

<3 My 100% Merino Wool Aran Crafts coat. This is a shameless unpaid advertisement. My coat is an absolute treasure. I mostly shop used clothing, and my coat is used. I'm athletic and outdoorsy, and it's still hard to find quality, durable clothing. I'm lucky enough to generally like the asthetics of sturdy clothes, but I still have to pick around the crap. I'm also lucky enough to be of a shape and size that gives me many different options while thrifting, so I can be picky and find good clothes, but even I sometimes leave Goodwill disappointed and hoping for better luck next time. I gotta get pants for this winter, like a whole new pants selection. Hopefully it's not too painful.

But these "incomplete" releases are often still much more game than a finished ps2 game. And we don't really know how finished the devs considered their games at the time. We know based on found content that many of our "finished" classics had cut and canceled content that could have been completed and released/activated on the funds from initial sales if patching had been a technological possibility. They have bugs and glitches that are just part of the game because they couldn't be fixed after release. There are old games that are or can be legitimately impossible to complete on certain platforms because they have a glitch or potential hard lock if you make certain choices. And once printed they were permanently broken games. Games have been coming out incomplete for a long time. At least now they can be fixed.

If you're genuinely not using it as a gaming machine, you could take it offline for use as a blu-ray player. That would at least let you skip the OS updates. And mine only complains about the shutdown if it comes unplugged or we lose power while it's on or in rest mode. It never complains if I fully shut it down from the menu.

Calling Planned Parenthood a political group is just telling on yourself. You hate women’s bodily autonomy and/or trans people enough to overlook the fact that they offer free and income cost adjusted birth control and vasectomies and hysterectomies and fertility treatments. They are a non-profit organization offering every type of sexual and reproductive health care. They, in fact, do not engage in politically driven discrimination against certain types of sexual health issues. They treat those trying to get pregnant with the same level of evidence based care as those seeking abortion or hrt or to be made infertile, without concern for public opinion or political discourse. I assume all of the above can be said of the children’s hospital mentioned, but I don’t have an ongoing relationship with them to base my comments on…

which feels like it might be easier if companies are already complying with this

This is part of the California regulation strategy: California is the largest market in the country for many products. It’s often cheaper to make things to California standards for everyone than to run two different production lines or facilities or give up California altogether, so we get California approved and labeled things all across the US. It’s a nifty feature of the state.

They’re oldies, but both of the Soul Reaver games and the Raziel parts of LoK: Defiance have a two tiered death system. (Minor spoilers going forward, but I’m talking spoilers for the opening cutscene from Soul Reaver, so I’d argue not real spoilers.) See, after having his physical vampire form thrown into the well of souls and falling through an endless abyss for several hundred years, Raziel exists first as a structurally sound spirit in a world where most things don’t maintain any resemblance to their corporeal forms after death. After being salvaged from the well of souls and set on a quest, he gains the power to create a corporeal form that resembles wretched wraith he has become in spirit. But that new corpse isn’t him, and destroying it doesn’t kill him. It just releases him back to the spirit realm, where he can regain his strength and manifest a new corporeal form. You can be killed in the spirit realm and sent back to a checkpoint, but the spirit realm is by and large far less dangerous than the physical. Very few threats can follow you, and the soul scavengers who populate most the spirit realm are little more than fodder for a creature like Raziel to slay and eat at his leisure. So you regain your strength, find a nexus between the worlds, and manifest a new body. It’s probably my favorite unconventional handling of death or failure in a game because of its comprehensive and essential connections to the story and lore of the series. Raziel is the beating black heart of the mythos of the series.

I’m deep in Earth Defense Force 5. It’s way more fun than it has any right to be. There’s no way I’m going to finish all the content. There is a ludicrous amount, over a hundred stages in a minimum of three difficulties with four characters who all have health and equipment that can be gathered and upgraded. It’s hard to make it sound fun, because it’s really just using crazy guns to shoot giant bugs and aliens and shit. It’s very simple, but the formula is so good. Flying around like a maniac as a Wing Glider feels so bad ass. I gotta figure out how to talk someone into playing it with me >_>

Thats a neat concept, but it hasn’t made it to Playstation yet. I’ll keep an eye on it, though. It sounds like a great compromise between my love of watching my little dudes do stuff and her love of getting to know a little township.

Oohh. I really like the look of Tokyo Xanadu. It kinda looks like the Persona formula with action gameplay, which isn’t necessarily bad. I can enjoy a good formula game. As long as the content is high quality, a familiar vessel is comforting. And if anything, action is preferable to long battles. She is not big on turn based and definitely isn’t getting through a long game with extended turn based battles. Persona was an exception because you could use elements to hurry most battles the fuck up xd