KPWHYS

"Make me profits."  That is the endgame dream of Capital -- a single sentence put into a machine and out the other comes productivity: successful apps, hit video games, blockbuster movies amongst others. All just means to profit. Today, there is a lot of noise around Labor vs. Executives but it is only a transition to the endgame. Almost all Executives are not actually Capital, but rather just capital allocators, and machines that can produce those outcomes better than humans can also allocate better than humans. By the time we get to a place where all you need to do to generate a hit video game is tell a machine to do it, you can just tell it to make as much profit as possible in every possible space.  And in that world, if multiple machines from independent parties can achieve this, what separates them is down to the raw inputs (per Jensen): power, chips, infrastructure, models and apps. Ultimately along geopolitical lines, but possibly multiple parties within a geopolitica...

I completed the first Darkest Dungeon 4 years after starting it  and I've just completed its sequel Darkest Dungeon 2, finishing the 5th confession Cowardice. The developers Red Hook are very brave and ambitious to reimagine key parts of the game in DD2, because it's very different. Some thoughts. DESIGN SHIFT OF BIG RUN TO MANY SMALL RUNS My runs in the first DD were 30-50 hours long. DD2 is aiming for the established rogue-lite formula of Slay the Spire, Hades 2 and Ball x Pit where each run is about 30-60 minutes long, and you do it over and over again while making progress in metagame systems for in-run advantages. This is the source of the biggest changes in the player experience. A SMALLER EXPERIENCE It's a big mental transformation as DD1 felt like a big epic campaign where you had multiple teams, had to build new ones and you could manage risk mid-stage by exiting but go again later. In contrast, DD2 is heavily instanced with less continuity, unnamed Characters and ...

Many games have Energy systems.  The biggest Collectible Hero / Squad RPG games like Marvel Strike Force are based around Energy. One comment I often hear is that a game like that based around Energy system has more player directedness and agency -- you enter into a session figuring out what you want to spend your Energy on. Usually on furthering some sort of PVE instance or farming a node for materials/shards. We can really think of this as: Energy is really another currency with the various PVE instances or Campaigns serving as Storefronts that take Energy in exchange for materials/shards. Yes, there is RNG and yes, there are failure conditions, but at heart it's a transaction. Some unique properties common to most Energy games: Energy is a resource that accumulates through time All players accumulate Energy at the same pace All players have the same Storefronts (Campaign/PVE nodes) to spend Energy on Players spend differently based on their goals  E.g. Player P1 spends on n...

I bought Chained Echoes after seeing it shoot up the Opencritic 2022 Hall of Fame at the end of the year. It's a tremendous one-man effort and a unique mix of systems and features taken from various JRPGs. I was captivated from the beginning and finished it as soon as I could.  There are 3 main things that made it stand out from the JRPG genre. Plot -- It is interesting and fairly easy to follow, with the Xenogears-inspired motifs of reincarnation and sin, and an ending with vibes seemingly inspired by Attack on Titan. There's some heavy-handed preaching in the story on important issues which makes some of the dialogue cheesy but the overall arc is really strong and engaging. In particular the creator did a really good job for its opening act -- stylish, taut and impactful. Characters -- Most of the cast is memorable and don't follow the JRPG mold. All of them have distinct motivations and histories, with Glenn, Lenne, Victor and Kylian forming the central web of the plot. ...

I've finished Ascension 20 for all the characters in Slay the Spire.  Between PC, Switch and iPad it took me 900 hours to do this. The durability and value you get here is one of the best qualities of a great roguelike, and I love that. That said, I'm not sure if I want to ever attempt anything like this again even though I did similar on other roguelikes like Dungeon of the Endless and FTL.  I kept playing even after I complained about how it felt like playing against random chance and it is not really about skill when you're playing at the highest levels. So the grim, absurd reality did not end up killing my desire to climb this mountain. Dice mountain. That's the power of a great game (and ego).

As a big fan of the original, I was hyped for this one. I played it for an hour or three every day until completion, and it's a great game for the most part. Some thoughts. 1. It's very fun to play The excellent combat in the 2018 prequel got better. Combat as an abstraction is about problem solving expressed in 3 primary ways: Character kit, Enemy design and Level design. GOWR is better in every respect especially Enemy design which was previously too limited, and more space and verticality is incorporated into fights better it never hits the traversal heights of an Uncharted or Returnal.  Outside of the strong underlying combat interaction design, the actual expression in the visuals, animation, SFX and ambient commentary is top notch. 40 hours into the game in the final level, I'm still thrilled and satisfied at performing an R3 execution.  The world is also larger and filled with content, which makes it a joy to explore. The RPG component worked about as well as it did ...