Games

Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Documentary by Valve

Sony is facing a $7.9 billion lawsuit that could impact over 9 million players. They’ve been accused of deleting purchased movies, TV shows, and games—items customers thought they owned forever.

This lawsuit, filed by consumer advocate Alex Neill, challenges Sony’s alleged abuse of its dominant position, charging high prices and restricting competition on the PlayStation Store.

How do you do, fellow gamers? I'm back with another set of video game screenshots! And today's game is a simulator game. I actually love simulator games; I have a whole category in my Steam library dedicated to them. It's the only library collection I've made that's specifically for a genre of game.

I got Tavern Manager Simulator on sale yesterday, and whereas there are probably better simulator games in my collection, I did enjoy this one in particular.

It opens with you acquiring a run-down tavern just outside a large castle. The place is boarded up and you need to remove some planks in order to get in the back door and open up the tavern.

The place is in disrepair and you spend some time picking up trash and cleaning stains on the floor before you can open the place.

The large piles of garbage are too much for you to deal with right now, so you just throw a cloth over them to get the place open and running.

You have a small private room just off to the side of the bar room. There's a bed in here where you can sleep until 6 AM the next morning. There's also a desk where you do all the "paperwork" for the tavern. This desk is where you can upgrade your tavern and its amenities. The more you level up your tavern, the more variety of foods you can sell, and the larger the tavern will grow. Literally; it will actually expand into a proper dining hall if you upgrade it enough.

Although the most important category is the Delivery tab, where you can order resources (food), furniture, and decorations.

You will need to make regular food orders as your supplies dwindle. You can place an order anytime and it will be at your back door in less than a minute. You can actually watch a horse-drawn cart show up down the road as soon as you order. Almost half the wait time is just watching it turn in a loop before stopping for you to unload it.

Next, you need to fix your sign out front. This is what you will use to signal when you're open.

When it's facing the tavern, you're closed. But when it's turned to face the road passing by your tavern, you're open. You can switch it anytime, day or night, to start or stop the flow of customers. You can also customize your new sign. Here is my tavern's sign, turned to signal that I'm open for business:

To start, you'll only have ale. Pouring ale is a bit of an art; you have to hold the pour button until it fills to the green line on a bar. Any less and it's just a "good" ale. In that green, it's a "perfect" ale and will have a sparkle to it. And if you go over, you will spill on the floor (requiring a clean-up) and it will be a "bad" ale, with a puke-greenish tint to it.

Make sure you hand out as many good or perfect ales as you can to customers! You're earning reputation to help improve your customer base and upgrade your tavern, so keep those customers happy! I don't know what the customers will do if you serve them a bad ale. I've just been dumping them in the trash and taking the financial loss so I don't hurt my reputation. Here was my very first customer:

You have a limited supply of dishes, so make sure to clean them as often as you can in the kitchen sink. You can get water from the well behind your tavern, and every dish you scrub counts for 2 cleaned dishes. It's super easy to clean, just swirl it in the soapy water for a few seconds and all the gunk will disappear from the dish.

You also have to clean your tavern as you go. Most patrons will leave a mess on the table when they leave. Collect their coin and dishes, but also don't forget to wipe down the tables as needed. Some customers will also leave footprints all over your floors. Don't forget to sweep them up!

Most customers will only make a single food/drink request, then leave when they're done. But this guy kept requesting more beers until he passed out on the bar. You can literally pick up these drunk customers by the scruff of their neck and toss them out. You can also ask anyone to leave anytime you want, but it's more fun to throw them out while they're black-out drunk. Plus, you collect a ton of coin from all the booze they consumed.

There are also beggars who might come into your tavern. You can give them what they ask for, which will give your tavern a boost in reputation, or you can tell them to scram. Later, you acquire a frying pan, which you can brandish as a weapon against unruly patrons or beggars.

This beggar lady came by pretty often. I had one guy come by saying he was dying of thirst and just needed some water. I went to the well out back and got a pail of water and he was very satisfied with that.

Over time, you start to expand the menu; first to sausage, then vegetable soup, and then grilled meat. It gets more complicated as you go on, because you now have to pay attention to customer's requests and not just hand out ale to every customer. Eventually, your kitchen gets fixed up as you level up your tavern and expand your menu. It starts to look like a nice place to work!

You will also unlock fairy helpers, whom you can assign jobs in the tavern. Which is nice when you have to cook soup, grill meat, chop firewood for the stove and grill, pour ale, clean the outhouse, and do dishes. PLUS ensuring customers are getting the food they want in a timely manner, cleaning up after them, and ordering more food when your supplies are getting low. It can get intense. Thankfully, I have not been completely swamped with customers yet. I got maybe 1-3 orders at a time, so I have a little time to balance everything. Just having a fairy to do dishes is a huge relief during open hours.

When you're closed up for the day, if you explore the grounds outside your tavern, you'll find hidden tributes to other medieval fantasy series. So far, I've seen references to Zelda, Dark Souls, Shrek, World of Warcraft, and Lord of the Rings. Let me know if you find any others!

If you catch a break (which I rarely did), you can chat with your customers, which gives you a +1 to your reputation. Although they usually just have either something weird to say, or a medieval dad joke.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable game. I had fun running back and forth, trying to keep food and drink prepared and dealing with customers as they came in. I had to make a lot of orders in the middle of the day to keep my stock up initially, but as I got used to the game, I was able to more effectively plan my food and drink and I was mostly able to make an order at night and be ready for the entire next day. It helps that none of the consumables ever went bad, so I could prep a bunch of stuff and leave it sitting out until customers ordered it.

I always felt there weren't enough hours in the day, though. Every minute of the day was a real-time second, so I basically had 24 minutes max to host customers every day. I'd run my tavern until I was almost out of everything late at night, then I'd spend the last few hours of the night/morning restocking and prepping for the next day. If I went to bed, it was usually with only an hour or two of sleep before getting up the next day. So far, I don't think sleep deprivation is a thing in this game. I ran my tavern for 3 days straight without any side effects at one point.

So if you like restaurant managing/waitressing games, this was a pretty fun medieval spin on the genre. Come grab a pint and enjoy!

I Continued Uncharted 4 today. I played Chapter 12, which had me driving a boat. The whole section is really pretty, the only part i hated was when i was driving around trying find 3 damn dolphins for an achievement. I found 2, but could never find the last. I have come to the conclusion i hate dolphins.

Despite Dolphins ruining the mood, i got some other lovely screenshots, such as this one: The angle makes it hard too see, but the water in the floor gives me Observatory Vibes from Mario Galaxy.

There was also this screenshot, which i feel like the lighting helped to sell the realism. I also turned off FSR and started running it at a native 720p which makes it look far better in my opinion.

Finally, out of the bulk of screenshots i picked i wanted to share this one too. I really like the cave and the water in it is gorgeous. This game has some absolutely beautiful water. I have to put it up there with Ocarina of Time and Mario Galaxy as some of my favorite water in video games.

Bonus: it also seems that the episodes have been rolled into the base game. Full details of the anniversary update.

I've been waiting for this to drop from the first trailer. Fantastic remake with a lot of tools to help first time players.

Anyone else playing?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/31568779

Memory lane

Today's game is Uncharted 4 again. I got back too it with Chapter 11. This whole chapter is really pretty with it architecture and lighting. Another example of what i mean is the lobby of the clock tower you go to:

This whole section gives me Myst vibes too. I think it's the way the lighting is done, but whatever it is makes, it makes me nostalgic because i had Myst on my old iPhone 1 way back in the day when i was younger.

There was also this screenshot which gave me heavy Assassin's Creed Syndicate Vibes. I think it's because it's a clock tower:

I also tried my hand at an action shot again. The FSR was making the water really fucking sparkly, i don't think it translated to the screenshot, but if you see some sparkles that's what it is:

Finally i wanted to share this shot i took while climbing the tower. I really like how it came out with the contrast between the pillars and city:

hi folks, hope all are well today. new'ish gamer and i have a question about etiquette in MMORPGs.

are there proper ways to engage people in game? it seems strange to me to randomly ask someone to be friends. i also don't see many ways to strike up conversations (if that's the proper way to refer to it).

for additional context, in a game like Throne & Liberty or FFXIV, there are tons of people running around doing their thing. do you just whisper to someone and say hi? do you comment on their character or if you saw them do something interesting / cool?

or, for something like The First Descendant you may run a mission with a bunch of random people and then everyone goes their separate ways. but, if that group was cool (and good) do you quickly try to friend everyone?

personal context (if it helps / matters), console gamer (PlayStation don't judge please, haha), really introverted / anxious around strangers IRL, older play (mid 50s) and ultimately... afraid of looking like a weirdo 😀

apologies in advance if this topic was already discussed (happy to check another post if some can point me to it). also, apologies if i don't directly respond to every message, although i will read them all.

edit - 2024/11/16 - i just wanted to say thank you to everyone for your advice and taking the time to reply / provide your insights. this has really been helpful!! happy gaming to you all 🎮 🕹️ 😄

So I'm playing Supermarket simulator. And if you notice TCG Simulator looks VERY similar. That's because it uses the same assets. It looks like it's actually the same shop location, on the same street. But in one game, it's a supermarket, and in another game, it's a card game similator.

But if you look, the neighborhood outside of your walls of your shop all looks very dead. Like you're in a movie set, where the rest of the town is actually just wooden building backdrops.

So I figure, what if each "shop" could be a real shop? You play online, and when you log on, your shop has an individual save data. It gets played on a server, and each server has a different set of shops.

So if you're a retro game shop, you're playing in the lot of land number 14. So when you log on, you're looking for a server that doesn't have anyone playing on land lot 14. That's the retro game shop.

When you log on, you can't have infinate time, since time needs to always be moving for everybody else at the same pace......but time also doesn't stop at 9pm, and the deliveries don't stop either. So at 9pm-8am, you restock your shelves. You order backstock for your storage room.

And the shop right next to your retro games shop? Maybe that's the supermarket. That's land plot 13. And you can go into the supermarket, and you can buy things. Just like real life people can come into your retro games shop and buy things.

There's also NPCs obviously, who would be the bulk of the customers.

But the neighborhood would actually look busy, and alive rather than one guy hanging out on a movie set.

And so, you could play supermarket simulator, and someone else could play TCG simulator, and someone else could play gas station simulator, and someone else could play retro games shop simulator, and when you you play online, you're all on the same server, on the same street, and there could be an actual economy. Customers come in, spend their money on you, you spend some of your money at the gas station. There could be a wholesale simulator, where you play the shop the other shops are ordering from on the market. So like when you order furnature, or things to stock your shop, they have to be in stock at the wholesale simulator. Which means the guy who plays that role, affects ALL the stores on the server. Because if he just lets shit go out of stock, you use the competitor, which is automated, and always in stock, but at higher prices.

Wow, changing the game's art direction this much is crazy. It looks like a completely different game now. I'll miss the cartoony flat animations and purple Prince, but I must say it does look nicer overall

Andrew Wilson is reportedly being considered for Disney's top job. It's a big move in the entertainment world, with potential ramifications for fans of Pixar and Marvel as well as The Sims, Battlefield, and Dragon Age

Me and a friend were going to play some Halo 2 today, but i forgot about my fucked about SD card, so i had to download the entire game again. ODST finished first, and i decided to just mess around in it since i've already beaten it and i was short on time today and wanted to play something. This was a lovely mugshot i took of a enemy that got stuck.

My screenshots were acting funky today and the timestamps were all off and then for some reason some screenshots didnt save. I only walked away with two really worth sharing, because of that. I think most of my screenshots i picked today were new ones, but i took so many i can't be sure, i know for a fact the Main one i picked is new though.

this was a picture of a picture of a antelope i took on the Zoo level. idk why but something about it in a Halo game stood out to me. I also have suspicions that this may not be a new screenshot, but was missed in. But i really like this one so i left it in.

I really like ODST's vibe. Master Chief is fun, (and i'm not fully in on the Halo lore so i may be wrong about this) but playing as the rookie and not Master Chief in the Spartan suit feels fun and more commando. I'm a sucker for everyday characters.

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/castlevania-anniversary-collection-a61f94

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/snakebird-complete-e6f0ae

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21988112

So, great news!

Not too long ago, the folks at OldUnreal announced in their Discord server that they got permission from Epic Games to distribute two particular links from archive.org to download Unreal Gold and Unreal Tournament.

Now they've published installers for automating the installation process, as well as installing their patches on top of Unreal/UT.

The installers are available to download on the links down below:

Unreal Gold Installer: https://www.oldunreal.com/downloads/unreal/full-game-installers/

Unreal Tournament Installer: https://www.oldunreal.com/downloads/unrealtournament/full-game-installers/

These are Windows only, but Linux and macOS installers are also gonna be released sometime soon, it seems!

Enjoy!

Happy Volts caters to the mentally ill residents of Bullworth, as stated by its sign ("Home for the Mentally Unwell") which may include the Townies Otto Tyler, Leon and Clint (aka Henry), who Jimmy helps return to the asylum. During the course of the game, the English teacher Mr. Galloway, and Greaser leader Johnny Vincent are admitted into the asylum, only to escape with help from Jimmy. And during the missions, Fenwick can also be seen on grounds. It is also rumored that Gary Smith was admitted into the asylum.

The building is divided into three blocks A, B, and C, Block B being reserved for patients who have violent tendencies. At first glance it may seem that only A and B block can be accessed, as only those two have the icon indicating that the door can be opened. However, the door to C Block can be broken down through punches, jumping against it, or weapons. Blocks A and B are in active use, but C Block is run down and decrepit. There is a mortuary located inside C block, along with what appears to be operating tables and a X-ray viewer depicting x-rays of humans with physical defects. If Jimmy regularly visits Block C he may encounter a door marked with EMPLOYEES ONLY with a green arrow under it, which is normally locked. If Jimmy opens this door, he will enter a fenced-off area. He will not be able to return to the building, and will have to wait till 2 am. Alternatively, Jimmy can use a weapon to hit an orderly though the fence, then he will be busted through the wall and then brought to Blue Skies Industrial Park police station. (Jimmy must be close up to the fence otherwise the orderlies won't spot him.)

During free roam, not a single patient is seen in the cells, though they can be heard screaming. The asylum is patrolled by the Orderlies, who wear white uniforms and look for trespassers. This interior is the most interactable in the entire game. If Jimmy wears the Black Ninja Outfit or Orderly Uniform he can explore the asylum without getting in trouble for trespassing.