Hollow Knight (more so than Silksong tbh)

Night in the Woods (not the same vibe as the games you mentioned but absolutely a “had a bad day” vibe)

I don’t know if you could have chosen a worse example. The sexual ads in cyberpunk are part of the worldbuilding and statement about society and capitalism. They absolutely are necessary to the story.

I’d rather they add an easy mode than globally nerf the difficulty

Also Silksong released at $20, which is a price point people are often waiting for older games to hit.

Regardless of semantics, Silksong is the only game I’ve played since it released.

You can also just buy digital downloads from sites like Bandcamp and Quobuz, and even iTunes if you click past the Apple Music streaming part.

This is the “metroidvania” genre part of the game but, it’s not for everyone.

That being said, both Hollow Knight and Silksong make the exploration a lot more streamlined than in older metroidvanias with the map features. When you don’t know where to go, check your map and look for paths that lead to areas that aren’t filled in yet. When you get a new power, see if you can remember any locations where that might be useful.

I agree with a lot of your commentary. A couple times so far a “good run back” has been the grind that let me buy some of the higher-cost items from shops. Sometimes it’s frustrating but usually once you get used to the path it goes quickly. There have been a few times where I didn’t realize there was a closer bench until after I already beat the fight lol.

Double damage would suck a lot less (and be a better mechanic) if you had 6 HP to start, or if you healed 4 at a time, or if bosses didn’t always do 2 damage.

Most of the bosses have 1-damage and 2-damage attacks. Also 6HP and increased healing are available relatively early (still a good way into the game but it’s a long game).

Skills and traps don’t do enough damage to feel especially useful either.

I have to strongly disagree with this. Especially when you start getting more traps/tools and upgrades for them, they get very strong and don’t require you to get dangerously close to the enemy like the basic attacks. Some of the bosses and many of the arenas I’ve gotten through mainly thanks to the consumable traps.

Common enemies are spongy, bosses take at least 33% too long across the board.

Like in most metroidvanias, you start off struggling against common enemies but as you get upgrades they become weaker relative to you. However I do agree that the trash mobs are a bit too tanky. Maybe somewhere between 50% and 25% less health would be ideal. I’m not sure I would adjust the bosses though.

There have been several boss fights so far where I die to the path to the boss more than the boss itself and it takes way longer to get to the boss than actually beating it.

That being said though, I do think there’s some merit to runbacks as an actual consequence for failure. I definitely strategize more cautiously because of it.

There are load times in Metroid Prime, they just hide it by keeping the door closed until the area on the other side is ready. Sometimes the same door will take different amounts of time to open.

GoG has been having issues too but not as bad as Steam ironically

GoG, Xbox, and Nintendo eshops are also having issues.

If AI coding is causing such a revolution, why are we not seeing a sharp increase in code production?

(Backed up with data)

2nd act was my favorite! I liked all the different mechanics

LLM training scraper caltrops.

lol fair enough

What is þ

Why

This one is supposed to work on the Switch 1

The server is sending me data and I’m choosing what program I’m using to interpret that data. That shouldn’t be illegal, regardless of the purposes of the data.

This is a nice CloudFlare ad

Basically.

They slowly decay as hawking radiation, but there’s nothing you can do to speed up the process.