mohab

Action games, for the most part, have well-thought achievements, TBH. If designed well, they can nudge you towards the intended way to play the game and by the time you're done, you will have mastered the gameplay or got really close.

In Hi-Fi Rush, for example, some achievements encourage you to parry, parry counter, air juggle… etc.

Challenges in action games are worth completing most of the time because they're typically designed to either drive home the intended purpose of individual combat mechanics, or outright reveal mechanics too advanced to cover by basic tutorials—e.g. dodge counter in Hi-Fi Rush.

God, I disagree with people who say things are just as bad as pre-WWII; it's much worse. Not that no atrocity preceded WWII, but the Nazis weren't reenacting a relatively recent one play-by-play, these people are.

And if they're not stopped, the outcome will be much worse.

Bizarre logic, and I almost exclusively play older games. Consumers being priced out of consumption is never good no matter how hard anyone tries to spin it.

Depends on the genre. Not every genre gets a boatload of new good games every year.

We only got like 2 action games last year and one of them was not so warmly received (Lost Soul Aside) and a handful of indies in early access.

By action, I mean Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden… etc. not the broad, useless Game Awards definition.

Not many new good shmups or fighting games either.

After 65 hours in Catherine: Classic, trying to beat Babel.

I love this game. It's one of those games I'll be revisiting and replaying forever.

Cut scenes still won't play on Linux, but the game works great otherwise.

I wish they release Full Body on Steam at some point. Or a sister game with a gender-flipped protagonist.

I respect Persona and Arena Ultimax is one of my favorite games of all time, but Catherine is my favorite Atlus game and, IMO, their finest creation.

I don't own a Steam Deck (yet) but I retested nearly all of my library on Debian this year, and everything runs well enough now so I stopped dual booting.

I remember trying on Arch (Artix) 6 years ago and nearly everything was a pain… now only issue is anti-cheat, and I'm not married to Dragon Ball FighterZ online, so it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

When a suit talks all I hear is: oink, oink, oink.

LocalSend works for me for Linux (Debian) and worked for Windows before. I send from my phone to my laptop (ethernet) too.

I'd say maybe check if traffic is going through your data on your phone? Maybe turn data off? And make sure LocalSend is open on both devices at the same time.

In action games, scoring the highest is typically not the priority as much as getting the rank, which happens once you pass a certain threshold predefined by the game. For example, if you need to score >5000 style points to get S in style, scoring >7000 won't change the outcome because S is the highest rank. The result is: how you score higher than >5000 style points does not really matter, it is up to you. In a good action game, there typically is multiple tools you could use to get there depending on many factors, one of them is preference. How you start a combo, how you end it, or what you do in the middle, is up to you as long as the finally tally of the battle adds up to >5000 style points, and you stay under the time and damage taken ceiling.

What you end up getting is multiple people fighting the same boss, getting an S rank, even though they have different strategies/play styles.

Even if you choose to shoot for the highest combo score, attacks are typically assigned categories, and each category is assigned a score value. Kind of like damage level in fighting games. So, in theory, you could chain together a combo with different attacks and get the same score as long as they all fall in the same category.

Now, this is one way to approach those games, which is different from what you hinted at earlier: playing to create style showcases, or "COMBO MAD", which can also be endlessly fun because the player actively chooses to throw away the rules of the game and make up their arbitrary rules for their own enjoyment. The games typically give you the tools to play them both ways, up to you.

In shmups, where grading is literal score chasing and more deterministic, flavor is typically added through (a) ship variety, (b) exploiting the game's scoring mechanics when planning a route, and (3) player skill. This is why scores with different ships are often listed separately because, even though you're playing the same game, using a different ship can heavily alter routing, including how the player exploits the game's mechanics to get higher scores. It is the main reason people are still breaking records for games that came out decades ago: if everyone is playing exactly the same way, this wouldn't be possible.

In theory, there may be only one optimal route for every shmup out there, but we'll never know what that route is for as long as people are still playing the games and breaking records. Same goes for action games: there may be one optimal combo for every enemy in every game, but in reality people typically only pursue this kind of knowledge when they're playing some kind of challenge run, or looking for tips to cheese the game if they're achievement hunting.

I see what you mean with fighting games. My issue is: I whiff a -9 attack, you're within range, you hit me with an attack that comes out in 5 frames, I am at 25% health, and I have no meter for a Roman Cancel: not only will your attack hit and do damage every time, it will be the same damage value, given I'm playing with the same character and you're not A.B.A. going super sayian or you have some other damage modifier on.

To approach this from another angle, I get hit in a fighting game, it's on me. I misread a play, or did something silly like not hit-confirming a -9 attack. I find this different from "dumb luck" when I tactically maneuver myself into a superior position, I have 99% hit chance, I miss, and they get a critical hit next killing my character off. That to me is... not ideal, haha.

I leave Faust to ElvenShadow, I'm not touching that crazy man.

I like DMC5 a lot, it's just too much of a combo simulator to make it into my list of favorites. I like weaving in and out of defense and offense like in Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden, and God Hand. I too prefer Hi-Fi Rush to DMC5, TBH. Such an awesome game! And mechanically deeper than most action game fans think, I have found. I watched some of my favorite action game YouTubers review it (Combat Overview and TheGamingBritShow) without covering some fun mechanics like parrying shields or dodge counters. Many people seem to think it's all about the music beat gimmick, but it has a little more going for it than that. A replayable game, for sure.

You’re free to freestyle and get a lower score, but without RNG, there will be one way to play that always works.

Most score you on style as well, not just efficiency. And massive breadth and depth of combat interactions yield more than one way that works, not just one. Even for shmups, routing can vary depending on the player, their skill, and understanding of the game. It's not a timid sandbox wherein only one way works.

If that counts as infinitely replayable, then so does any other game you enjoy.

Keyword is enjoy. I don't see myself replaying DMC5 for as long as I've been playing some of my favorite games because I enjoy it less.

And for fighting games, that RNG is just substituted for your opponents’ decision making.

Hmm… how does that work? I hit my opponent, they take damage, no Xcom bullshit. I don't see any RNG-like behavior in this interaction.

Ayyy, I love linking to Gamebrary: https://gamebrary.com/b/pUM4ceVfPR2l9K2qqLDN