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Friday Fun Thread for January 26, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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The steelman is that it looks and feels a lot like shovelware, and both Minecraft-likes and the basebuilding genres are filled with them, to the genres' detriment.

...So why is it so goddamn awesome? Like, I've been dumping multiple late-night gaming sessions into it, and I'm loving it. Apparently a lot of other people are loving it too, given the massive concurrent players at the moment. Collecting resources and capturing pokeymans is fun. the automation feels pretty limited, but what there is of it is fun as well. The combat is pretty good, with the transition from base crossbow to musket being one of the most absurdly satisfying gameplay experiences in recent memory. The jank is definately there; I hate missing throws with the orbs, I hate losing orbs to a miss, building can be twitchy, interaction with entities can be a bit spotty, a few of the controls can feel a bit unintuitive... but that all pales in comparison to the joy of exploring and building and acquiring. And apparently, a lot of other people agree.

The criticism feels like it's mainly coming from critics, not players, and we're seeing another example of hostility between the consumers and the intelligentsia. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that it feels real good to see members of the games journo set taking a hard L fighting obvious consumer consensus.

pal-cannibalism

Regular cannibalism too. You can capture humans, and apparently the cleaver works on them as well, though I suppose they technically don't drop food products. Hey, mod opportunity!

Yeah, that's definitely fair. I've not had a chance to play anything in the last couple weeks, and almost all of the serious critics are pretty clearly working more from marketing material or watching other people's streamed play. I don't know that's entirely Critics-as-in-intelligentsia -- I've definitely seen complaints from Ark/Valheim player circles, although that seems to be changing a bit as bigger names like Syntac seem to be sticking with it -- but it's definitely a complaint that makes more sense outside of the box. Among those who've bought and played it, reactions generally seem far more positive.

(and from what I've heard, bad as building and entity interactions are, they're still not Ark-bad.)