Devin (AKA Ryuuga Hideki)

Fair point!

I've definitely burned myself on a game that I otherwise enjoyed - Stories: The Path of Destinies. Going for all 24 endings was incredibly boring/grindy after the first 5 or 6, but for some reason I forced myself to go for it.

To be contrarian while looking for genuine discussion on this topic - if it's diminishing your experience, is it really *your* fault? Someone, somewhere had someone else spend time, effort, and money to put that in the game, so wouldn't that have been better spent elsewhere you would have enjoyed?

It's all good! Not like I don't have other stuff to play at the moment, I've just been looking forward to more City Mode after the playtest ended.

I'm not going to be at my family's until next week anyway, so as long as I have it in time to play with my bros like old times then I'll be happy.

I find the balance between designing intrinsic and extrinsic rewards in games endlessly fascinating, and if I had the time, skill, and confidence to do so I'd absolutely write up a big, fat blog post dissecting it that nobody would ever read.

Anyway, I lean more towards intrinsic rewards. HBU?

Played about 45 minutes of Clover Pit since it was added to Game Pass. I absolutely get what it's saying (since there's nothing subtle about it) and that's all I needed to see of it. It's just not fun.

I'm glad that I don't have an addictive personality for the real thing.

I’ve not had a bad experience preordering from Best Buy before, but I’m still waiting for Kirby Air Riders and it apparently hasn’t even left their facility yet. Can’t even cancel it to go pick up in store when I’m in the area tomorrow. 🥲

I forget if it was hbomberguy or People Make Games that had a fairly scathing video essay on Roblox. I admittedly don’t have firsthand experience with it, but everything I’ve seen and heard has just gotten worse in the years since that was released.

Thanks! I think that helps. It’s just such a foreign world to me. lol

CONTEST

-Must repost this tweet (you don't have to follow me)
-Pretend you have $50 in Nerd Bux
-Reply with 5 fake bets you'd place based off my odds listed on my site, min $5 bets
-Must wager all 50 NBs
-Most NBs wins

Winner: Gets up to a $60 game
2nd- up to a $40 game
3rd- up to a $20 game

I’m trying to wrap my head around the betting odds thing to make my guesses. I stay as far away from that as possible so it still makes zero sense to me after reading the linked article a couple of times.

Will have to focus on it after work.

Also, that’s super generous of you!

Steam for sure requires it - supposedly - but some games like Where the Winds Meet don’t have any sort of disclosure attached. There’s still just a lot of self-reporting honesty involved at this point.

“Whether they disclose it or not”

And that right there is IMO why we need regulations. Not necessarily to ban or restrict its use but to fully inform customers.

Best comparison I can think of is meeting requirements to call food organic. We need a verifiable “no gen-AI” label.

AI = no buy.

It’s just that simple.

Epic being scummy? And with Fortnite? Why I never.

I swear F2P games with predatory monetization like this have done more harm to people and the industry than anything else in gaming.

Catching up on the Xbox thing now.

Vampire Crawlers will be day one and Crowsworn looks up my alley. Everything else... 🤷‍♂️

I'm getting the same vibes from Tides of Annihilation that I got from Lost Soul Aside's trailers. I see so much hype for it but I really don't get it.

‘Where Winds Meet’ uses a crazy amount of gen AI. AI chat and AI imagery. Just an FYI post.

Ugh, dangit. I had just finished downloading a couple of days ago to try this weekend since I saw one of my friends playing it. That's an immediate nope for me.

They don't even have any sort of disclosure on the Steam page, which I'm pretty sure Valve requires. Will see if I can report that.

I realize this is a shortsighted and dangerous take if it’s ever reversed by someone sane.

This is all just so frustrating to deal with.

If only reverse psychology might work on some people.

“You don’t trust the CDC, right? They just changed their stance and claims there’s a link between vaccines and autism. Surely that’s not correct if they say it, better get your vaccines to help prevent autism!”

So sick of those anti-vax morons.

OK, some underlying, simmering rage has been vented...

I'm seriously considering a replay of Expedition 33 amid the GOTY hype, especially since I'd be going for full completion on Steam instead of mainlining the story like I did on my Game Pass rental.

Holy... I posted this before seeing the news about Unity and Epic working together to have even more pointless IP crossovers in Fortnite.

Why would I want that? Why should anyone want that?!

Absolute garbage. Fortnite and Epic Games are a cancer on the gaming industry.

I try to avoid hyperbole, but I'd honestly use a monkey's paw wish on Epic never getting supremely lucky from shoehorning a BR mode into Fortnite.

I genuinely cannot think of any drawbacks. I hate everything that it stands for and popularized in modern gaming; it's a soulless morass of slop.

I'll be honest, some of the votes are games I've not played personally and just voted on vibes. Not to mention knowing nothing of the e-sports/streamer related options.

(I don't even care about who wins, this was just an easy-ish way to condense my thoughts on the nominees.)

I’m probably the only person on here talking about the PS3-era Yakuza games. 😅 Other than those, most of what I’ve played recently is within the current discourse.

I have a feeling next year this will be a slightly more interesting question for me to revisit.

I’ve not played it myself but I’ve heard fairly good things about the fan remake. (Though my expectations are firmly in check knowing the fan base.)

You could make a meta-analytical claim that the recurring motif of “For those that come after” is the team paying direct homage to the genre classics. Those games are the previous ‘expeditions’ that allowed E33 to reach where it did, and they’re continuing the journey and paving the way for others.

As if E33 winning any award retroactively makes the classics worse or less-beloved. The gatekeeping/grandstanding around it is truly weird and off putting behavior.

Like or dislike it the game all you want, that doesn’t bother me. Just don’t belittle other’s opinions that differ.

I think I come down pretty cleanly split between retro and modern, depending on where you draw the line. I'm leaning toward the PS3/360 era as the current main dividing line.

That said, I'm not a huge NES fan; most of my taste formed in the SNES/Genesis era.

Key art for the Yakuza 4 Remastered game showing its primary cast of characters.

Game 18 of 2025 - Yakuza 4 Remastered

I'm still iffy on the combat in this series, especially the boss battles. But the stories are consistently engrossing and the massive swing to feature 4 protagonists is impressively ambitious for RGG's second HD game.

🤦‍♂️Goofed the alphabetical order. Oh well. I'll just blame the latest bout of insomnia.