Gaming

Top: 98% of devs games during the apocalypse, gamer is screaming why aren't my games working, while meteors are hurling in the distance.

Bottom: Games I developed during the apocalypse, gamer is relaxing playing his game, while meteors are hurling in the distance.

I thought I would add the alt text for this image here to make it easier to find.

What I am trying to show is that game devs need to have their games on fantasy computers playable in browser as well as physical hardware, like I do.

This work is licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

If you want to play my games or contribute to my games the link is here, yes you can play the games in the browser for compressed versions of the games: https://daniel-hanrahan-tools-and-games.github.io/

Admittedly, I am not a games enthusiast, whether video or board, but I have played both at times. In particular, I played a lot of -- OK, this is totally gonna reveal that I'm an old ;P -- THPS, and I'm 100℅ sure I played both RPG-type computer games as well as like Mario Bros stuff. However, I just have never really grasped what makes video games so enticing.

I suspect this is an annoying and well-trodden path, but I would sincerely appreciate it if you could find it in your heart to help me understand.

For me personally, I tend to look at things in terms of costs and benefits. Through that lens, most games seem like a bad deal. In principle, I like some of the more quirky or esoteric ones, but it quickly seems like a lot to learn relative the payout.

When I was in HS, I had a band. Has that type of interaction simply been replaced by video games?

I swear I'm not trying to troll -- I really want to understand the interplay between video games and psychology. Cuz it seems like FPSes are dominant whereas not too long ago they were a single niche among many niches.

I appreciate your taking the time to read/reply.

A couple weeks from now, on January 26, 2026, we'll be launching the full version of our new gaming website, Mothership, which aims to analyze games specifically through the lens of gender and identity. Stepping into the shoes of another person or thing, inhabiting a body other than your own, is an inextricable part of the experience of playing a game. We here at Mothership — a queer and women-owned independent video game publication co-founded by Polygon veterans Maddy Myers and Zoë Hannah — have always understood that this is what games are about.

You’ll read writing from a diverse roster of contributors at Mothership. You’ll find reviews, criticism, and opinion stories, as well as articles about how games are made and marketed. You’ll get investigative reporting on the people who make games in an era when “DEI” is on the wane. You’ll read historical deep dives on the games and creators that paved the way, especially those that didn’t get due credit way back then.

We believe this type of writing is not only necessary but all too rare. We know that games journalists and critics who've covered the intersection between gaming and gender, bodies, and identity have faced serious backlash in the past, and the contributors here at Mothership have faced it ourselves, too. With your help, we'll build a sustainable business that can afford rigorous editing processes, sensitivity readers, and legal counsel when necessary for high-risk investigations of high-profile games studios and figures. That last category is the work that's priciest and yet — we think you'll agree — the most important possible work to fund in this space.

Welcome to the beginning of the end.

😭😭😭

But it's a good and right decision, of course!

#cyberpunk2077

We're back! Sorry for the delay, holidays were busy :)

I've been going all in on BG3! I got to act 3 and think I am getting pretty close to the end now. I've loved it but I am also ready to be done with it

Short: I opened up the Nintendo eshop on a hacked 2DS. And didn't realize my brothers main Nintendo account was logged in, as I usually only play offline. Will his account get banned?

Long Question:

I recently hacked my 2DS with https://3ds.hacks.guide/ and installed pirated games on it. And I was curious what would happen if I open the Nintendo eshop, it opened up and to my surprised showed an account and the purchased game. But I never had logged in with an account before.

I quickly realized this is from my brothers account, when I gave him the 2DS a few years ago. He logged in with his main account. It is not possible to remove the account from the 3DS operating system unless a factory reset is done. And that's bad, because this account has a lot of history for him, his Pokemon history and everything that is attached to him. I do not want his account to be banned. My fear is, that a ban wave will occur later.

After reading a bit, I found out that the NNID can be removed with the hacked system. I hope its not too late. Would it be possible for him to reclaim his account in case of a ban?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/56076710

TLDR: To know if a game was good before playing, I read many (Backloggd) reviews, then decided. There is a reason for why it has the score that it does, but I couldn't trust it blindly.

This is that, applied to roughly the top 0.2% of games and in the form of a spreadsheet, though I will keep at it: https://cryptpad.fr/sheet/#/2/sheet/view/X1Nb6ruJC5reUQvkfEIV19VmbxQJ8-VU9PUFQiU2htM/embed/

The rest of this post is just me explaining why I did this so if you want you can ignore my yapping. We've all probably found a book, movie, game or whatever else that is "critically acclaimed" disappointing, or maybe even quite bad. I felt that way with TotK, for example.

That's not the only time something like that happened to me, but recently it made me question if there could be a way to know with greater certainty if a game is worth playing it or not. Being critically acclaimed and having a high average score is not the best way to tell that, since it hides all kinds of problems that the public may have with a game.

So, to be able to tell if there were significant problems, I jumped straight into Backloggd, which is a video game review site. Users are the ones that make the reviews and like them, and you can also see the amount of likes a review has and comment. That may seem trivial but some other sites don't offer the ability to like reviews (Metacritic), and some others do offer it, but don't show the exact amount of likes a given review has (GameFAQs). That's why I chose only Backloggd, because aside from being popular, it makes it easy to judge which are the biggest problems that people have with a game, and if said problems affect a significant amount of people.

Basically, my initial idea was to just look at the top reviews that the highest rated games had. Then I would see if they were really beloved or if they were actually controversial. As said, the average score is very good at hiding that; and as a matter of fact, I've already seen a case of a "5 star" game with negative reviews at the top when sorted by the number of likes.

Still, I am aware that someone liking a review doesn't necessarily mean that they are in full agreement with the reviewer's opinion or with the rating that they give the game. For example, in a review I wrote not long ago on Mother 3, I gave the game 3 stars (haha, also I still liked it). However, the two people that liked the review had given the game 5 stars. I don't know if that's because they found the review interesting, well-written, or funny, but at least in reviews with a higher amount of likes there is sure to be a group of people that does agree with was is said. I'll admit, this isn't a perfect way to know how many people agree with a certain opinion, but I really don't know another review site that offers something better.

Anyways, I looked for controversial games among the highest rated and proceeded to exclude them from what you could say is my "to-play list".

At that time, I didn't even read through any reviews. I was just looking to finish as soon as possible. It didn't feel right for me to ignore something like Silksong without having any idea on what kind of issues it could have, but still I kept on going for a while like that. I only changed this after looking into the review page of a fan-game I'm quite fond of (read as: I love it), which is Ring Racers. The page is filled with negative reviews, which isn't unexpected given the type of game it is. So, I got to reading them. The majority of their gripes were reasonable, but the thing is, even after all of that I didn't feel like they'd shown what the problem with the core of the game was, so my opinion has hardly changed. After going through that I made sure to go back and start doing this for real, and the result is this list.

Right now what I do is read through mostly negative reviews on a game, from the most-liked one to the last one with at least 10% as many likes as the one on top. While I read, I copy the things that stick out the most, those being the aspects of a game that would probably diminish my enjoyment of it. I don't really feel the need to copy down every minor complaint, because I'd rather keep the pages brief. Finally, if what I have collected at the end doesn't point towards a game being that bad, or if only a small minority of people complain about the game, then it passes. So in the end, until there is proof against it, I'll consider the rating to be justified. Oh yeah, and I never take the story into account for anything, so I've excluded every single VN I've seen. Not that I hate stories in general, but that's quite another subject.

One last thing, about the fact that: "While I read, I copy the things that stick out the most, those being the aspects of a game that would probably diminish my enjoyment of it". Obviously I do this list for myself and I can't possibly get rid of my own bias, but still I think it could be of use to others. In essence, it's a place where the gripes that some reviewers may have with the highest-rated games are condensed, so it can be useful for anyone that may be questioning whether to play any of them. And if that's not the case, at least it can serve to show Backloggd for those who may not have known of it. There's some really good reviewers over there.

So what happens when sheer stubbornness, a glorified button box, Ace Combat and the Unreal Engine Scripting System meet? Pure magic. I got the game to spew out a constant stream of telemetry data and events in search for more immersion in my VF-1 inspired home cockpit: https://makertube.net/w/cbXJAveVgVTGVEi58akVTA / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50J-gjkgJxE

If there's a single throughline for the PC gaming year that was 2025, it's finally accepting that the pursuit of fancy graphics just doesn't make sense anymore.

Tech has hit a hard graphics plateau: raw generational updates are now nuanced upgrades measured in single-digit frame gains rather than evolutions anyone with eyes can appreciate, and the subsequent pivot to AI-generated frames and experimental hair follicles aren't really revving anyone's engines when those upgrades cost a month's rent. Even if the latest hardware really was all that, the precarious AI bubble is locking normal humans out of it anyway.

It's good timing, then, that cutting edge graphics are increasingly irrelevant to keeping up with the hobby. A bright spot of 2025 was the continued rise of "friendslop," a cringey internet-spawned label for a broad genre of cooperative games designed for groups of friends.

Though it looks like it's sticking, friendslop is a terrible name for these games, because it (perhaps unintentionally) lumps them in with a growing pile of low-effort games cranked out by anonymous Steam grifters every day, and of course, actual AI slop. The well-intentioned use of "slop" probably refers to the subgenre's deliberate use of janky physics and ragdolls to conjure comedy. In REPO, navigating a valuable and fragile vase down narrow hallways is uncomfortable, awkward, and intense—much like actually moving a cherished piece of furniture from one house to another.

But there's nothing sloppy about games with a simple premise, instantly learnable controls, and crucially, with an art direction that accommodates whatever hardware you have to play them on. To have all of that at once and still end up with a fun game is anything but low-effort.

SuperTux is a classic side scrolling platformer, very old game at this point. The code is Open Source (or if you prefer the term "Libre").

I just played it last year a bit on my Steam Deck and remember trying the game out years ago on my old laptop and before that, it was one of the first Linux games I ever tried in early 2000s from Live CDs. I digress. :D

This game is also available on Steam, but they last updated it there 4 years ago and this new update is not included: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1572920/SuperTux/ Presumably because the new version is still a beta. You can download the new updated version directly from Github: https://github.com/SuperTux/supertux/releases/tag/v0.7.0-beta.1

"Following the release of Silent Hill 2 in October 2024, we were able to deliver Silent Hill f ​​in September 2025, and the Silent Hill series is now back on track," series producer Motoi Okamoto told Famitsu. "We aim to release about one title per year, including both announced and unannounced titles. We're not sure how far we can achieve this, but we'll do our best as the producer of the Silent Hill series. Ideally, we'd like to keep the buzz around Silent Hill constant."

One new game per year sounds like a steep challenge, but Konami's initial plans for the series' revival may already have them set for at least the next two years. Konami first announced Silent Hill: Townfall, from Annapurna Interactive and BAFTA-winning Stories Untold developer No Code, during the big Silent Hill broadcast in 2022. Complete silence has surrounded the project since then, though a now-deleted retail listing from department store giant Liverpool Mexico suggested Townfall would launch in March 2026.

Hey all! There is a certain thing that I noticed a long time ago, but recently experienced again yesterday while playing wipeOut, a fast paced futuristic racing game.

I, as a lot of people, often struggle with letting go, or trusting myself to be well without actively taking control or solving things.

I have learned however, that to heal and grow as a person it is important to trust your instincts, your body and your inner processes and sometimes let things be and let go of control.

There is no more fitting exercise in this than growing in certain challenging games. I mostly experience this through wipeout or sometimes hard platformers, but I suspect that people who like soulslikes often feel the same sensation: you can grind a hard part as long as you like, but the moment you start letting go and trust the experience you have built throughout your attempts is when you suddenly start doing what you believed to be impossible.

And now it goes even further. I start a new time trial in wipeOut that is seemingly impossible to achieve. My first attempt is a whopping 10 seconds too slow. But instead of disappearing, I smile and look forward to the growing experience. Because I already know I can do this. I just need to let my body process this, experience all the hard corners and quick shifts. And while calmly doing so, often even listening to a podcast or some music on the side, it indeed does happen that way. And when you finally beat the time, you do it with 1 second to spare, and it didn't even feel that hard. Just a logical conclusion from a process of learning, growth and trust.

Of course this doesn't always work. I often get too focused on almost winning and become overly conscious and start making mistakes. And some challenges just are too hard / not made for you and it is OK to let go then. But even in that case, letting go after calmly growing to my limit feels satisfying, as I know I gave it a chance.

These experiences give me trust in other processes in my life: healing from fears, mental barriers, mourning, learning new skills. It's a great thing that I wanted to share.

The FPS is once again in transition. It's a change that's been percolating for a while, but 2025 was the year a number of developing trends in PC gaming's favorite genre finally boiled over.

The time of extreme skill ceilings and the pursuit of metallic ranks defining every new multiplayer FPS is behind us. The escalation of gaudy, overpriced cosmetics created a distaste so palpable that Call of Duty had to desperately change its game plan. The two biggest shooters this year cost money, and there were no major free-to-play releases. The theme of this new era, as I see it developing so far, is remembering that shooters can be both casual and thrilling. High fun, low emotional investment.

An old guard of life-consuming live-service games remains a vibrant and popular part of this genre, but they're once again sharing the space with—and even adopting the attributes of—a more casual breed. Games that don't mind if you only play them once in a while. Games that let you make your own fun, encourage cooperation, or earn our respect by not bombarding us with ads.

I had to share this because no one else in my life will listen.

If you play racing games in first person, you’ll know that you have a head-on view of what’s directly in front of you. Maybe you can look left and right outside your windows with the right thumbstick. Maybe not.

This works and is how almost everyone plays racing games. If you swerve around a corner and your car is sideways, it’s hard to know if you’re making that corner or if you’re about to spin out and crash into a wall.

In comes VR. You’re directly inside the car. When you lean forward, you actually lean forward. You can glance up to check your mirrors, and most importantly - you can turn your head to look out the left and right window!!!

All of a sudden my drifts through tight corners are perfectly in control. I look out the right window as I swerve sideways through a left turn to see if my car is still driving in the middle of the road.

I went from 4-5 crashes on my rally course to 1 just by using vr. The stereoscopic 3D of a lens per eye lets me judge speed better. Looking out of the windows ensures I don’t crash.

New life has been breathed into my racing setup. I play with an Xbox one controller and it’s still great.

If you’ve got a vr headset or can find a used one for cheap and can plug it into your computer, it’s a must. I can’t race in 2D anymore. I highly recommend.

2025 has probably been the best year for Linux that I can remember, at least from the perspective of general PC users. It's had tons of publicity as a viable alternative to Windows, even, and perhaps especially for gaming. I switched to it myself earlier this year, but I'm back on Windows and I don't think I'll be switching back to Linux properly any time soon.

The Linux hype this time was precipitated by Valve's Linux-based operating system, SteamOS, opening up for use on other handhelds than just the Steam Deck. That had been long on the cards, but it finally started seeming close at hand early on this year.

SteamOS has shown what Linux can be capable of for gaming in large part because of Proton, the compatibility layer Valve employs to translate Windows commands into ones that Linux can understand. It's a fork of WINE tailored towards gaming, created and maintained by Valve specifically for that purpose.

Over the years, Proton has gotten so good that compatible games tend to run flawlessly. Valve has an incentive to ensure this is the case, as a great gaming experience on SteamOS via Proton makes for more Steam Deck and Steam Store sales.

The development and improvement of Proton has been a massive part of what's made Linux distros genuinely viable for gaming. And yes, I said "distros", plural, because any distro can use Proton, as it's built into Steam for Linux. It's not just a SteamOS thing.

My own recent foray into Linux was very short-lived, however. I've dipped into Linux many times over the course of my life, but I've never stuck with it, and this time I was punted back over to Windows with undue force. You can read the full story explaining why here, but the long-story-short is it just completely broke—trackpad, Wi-Fi card, the lot—while I was working away at Gamescom, and I didn't have the time or patience to troubleshoot and fix it.

A frantic Windows install was my solution, and the experience has traumatised me enough that I'm reluctant to give Linux another go, at least not on a machine that I depend on for work. I'd experienced troubles that made me consider abandoning Linux prior to this—Nobara Linux didn't seem to gel with my laptop's hybrid graphics and external monitor—but my complete disaster at Gamescom solidified things.

Still, that was just my own experience, and the hype was still there for Linux as the year went on. Whether that was from influencers and publications capitalising on the hype by generating even more hype, or whether it was real enthusiasm, it doesn't matter: it was there.