Is that a French stereotype I am not aware of?

Because, I’ve got a bit of experience in teaching math, and I wish most kids in that class could speak math naturally.

Do you often formulate math problems spontaneously?

The ones that leap out of water to get you on world 3 were already quite stressful.

That fish didn’t terrify me near as much as the angry sun though. Back then I often did “almost complete” runs where I’d just kept a lakitu cloud to skip the sun level from world 8.

On the part about Cappy tricks, not sure why the author forgot all 3D Mario games have always included more or less complex move tricks/combos.

Mario 64 already had triple jump, wall kicks, diving/sliding, long jumps, side jumps…

Super Mario Sunshine added a lot of complex moves with FLUDD, and even a limited way to make your own platforms. Odyssey just does it a lot better IMO. I kinda hated Sunshine Yoshi.

And it’s not like the more complex combos are required to finish the game. Occasionally you need one for 100% completion, but most of the time they’re just cool tricks to pull off to reach a place faster, or just grab a few coins.

“We’re only asking about those outrageous monetization schemes so we know how much you hate them! We definitely didn’t consider them!”

Yeah, testing the waters.

Further clarification from Steam :

I do not have a sex crime. I’m not going to go into specific charges and such or tell you the story. What I did was wrong and that’s all you need to know.

She’s right, this is not really anyone’s business.

According to the announcement, the other developer quit game development some time ago and isn’t active anymore.

It’s all about pride and accomplishment, you know.

I’m so glad none of the games I care for went for a free to play/microtransaction model. Or maybe including these into their core design is a big part of what makes them unappealing to me.

Yeah, well I tend to give sites I don’t know the benefit of the doubt, which is why I don’t ad-block by default. Now I know this one doesn’t deserve to exist at all.

I tried to read that article. You’ll notice that the end of my message refers to the Steam rating system, which is mentioned towards the end (or at least I think it was the end) of that article. Problem is, this site is utter fucking shite, and most of it was obscured with scrolling tracking ads as I always trying to read. So yes, I missed the part about it just being a form to fill.

As for “official”, yes, I know PEGI/ESRB/Whatever are industry-controlled. But for better of for worse, they’re still used as reference, and they’re third party (though clearly not that independent). It’s still different from declaring yourself what your game contains.

I wonder how it works for more alternative platforms like itch.io.

No way you’re having any official ratings on 99% of their catalogue. Most of it is experimental stuff, and having basically no barrier to publish is the point.

Unless the German regulations allow self-assigned ratings? It says they allow Steam’s own age ratings, how are those applied?

Can’t disagree with that.

Depends. Microsoft might be to blame indeed but I’ve seen several people saying Ubisoft has a habit of using undocumented non-public API.

If they’re not supposed to use it to begin with, it’s their fault when it doesn’t work anymore. That would certainly explain why it happens to almost nothing but Snowdrop powered games.

It’s somewhat useful, but it’s not my favourite way to overcome obstacles because swimming is very slow and kinda janky.

The thing is, in theory, you’ve got several echoes and strategies that would let you cross a ravine or climb up a cliff. For example there’s several floating monsters that can carry you, one that you can grab as it climbs walls, and those flying tiles from aLttP that you can ride (that one’s kinda cool. I wanted more like that).

Water cube is just the one that works in almost all situations. And a big problem in this game is that it’s a pain to switch echoes all the time, so water cube is one of the few you’ll have in speed dial most of the time.

My main problem with this game is how it has maybe six or so useful things you’ll be spamming most of the time for convenience.

I was on board with the concept, but they didn’t carry it far enough. There were simply not enough situations requiring clever use of items, and most items/monsters felt useless compared to a few that just worked better in most situations.

Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom did a really good job of creating open-ended problems and letting you experiment with all the tools you got. I think Echoes of Wisdom should have focussed more on that.

The fact you can at any moment trigger a time-limited Link mode which is basically standard LoZ combat and makes the game ridiculously easy is a sign they did not believe in their concept enough. If your main gameplay loop becomes so tedious you implement shortcuts to avoid it, you’ve done something wrong.

I mean Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Odyssey really are a kind of collectathon too.

They just don’t push it to the extent of Rare’s stuff, and Odyssey in particular does a very good job of eliminating the tedious parts.

Do you mean specifically N64 art style or just semi-open 3D platformers?

Because even though lots of them are mediocre, you can still do these right for modern audiences. Super Mario Odyssey comes to mind, I had a blast playing it.

Balatro is the chillest, smartest game ever to be rated 18+.

Thank you PEGI for warning us against the dangers of knowing what a straight flush is.

I’ve only played in VR, and the weird part is after a while, the visuals barely register. I’m too focused on the game to notice the crazy shit happening in the background. Like, oh, wait, there are dolphins now… For how long have they been there?

Sound feedback is awesome though.

And I’m a big fan of the co-op 3 player connected game.

I actually never played old Tetris, even though I had a NES and a gameboy. I was kinda late on the Tetris bandwagon.

There’s a sort of NES Tetris mode in Tetris Effect. Having played mainly “modern” Tetris, like DS, standard Effect and 99, I just hadn’t realized how I’d miss all the little things that were refined around the 90s. No hard drop, no super rotation, completely random block distribution, no hold… Rough.

Weird that a game that looks exactly the same could feel that different.