Games

Half life was supposed to release in November 1997 but coding team decided to overhaul the game completely and released it in 19 November 1998. Everything is changed about it and became one of the most important game of gaming world.

Today i played some more of the Modded Minecraft Server i setup. Since last time i posted this i moved my ship halfway across the world. There turned out to be a island in the way though so i slapped a bunch of balloons on top after using Sheep and Create to make the balloons, and i flew it to my new base location. It was honestly a bit fun, i wasn't sure i'd be a fan of the Airship idea because i wanted to stay grounded with my build, but after i didn't have to deal with any Ice and Fire dragons i was a fan. Plus being able to slap on Cruise Control and let this thing fly itself is nice.

I also got a Forge through Tinker's Construct setup. With this badboy (which is 14x14) i can smelt so many ingots. It may be overcompensating though as i don't think i can see myself using a smelter of this size. The challenge of hunting down a mesa for clay and waiting to make the seared bricks though was fun and rewarding once i finished. At some point i want to install ladders though along with windows to see the alloys.

All of this is placed under this unfinished shack, which i currently im trying to decide on a roof for. Surprisingly no spiders have climbed the wall to get to me. Maybe i'll leave it open air too see the stars at night.

Finally, a little worse for wear is my friends house which is how i ended the night. If you'll look at the screenshot you'll notice that i'm in creative mode. That's because someone didn't read the Eureka wiki and accidentally turned his whole house into a boat because a ladder bridged his home and boat he was making.

I had to use creative to try multiple things to help him. It's a casual server and he didn't know any better, so i figured i'd let him off with creative this once. What we first tried to do was lower the house back into place by using balloons. That didn't work though so instead i'm going to reset the chunk for him, let him go into creative and redo it. i trust him not to cheat or anything so i don't mind doing this (also, like i said, it's a casual server for me and my friends to have fun). Tomorrow i'll have to figure out how to do that though, along with a few other QOL mods i need to add. Also probably a regular backup mod to prevent this.

CATO is that old nerd joke about cats and toast turned into a puzzle platformer. Cats always land on their feet, but buttered toast always lands butter-side down, so if you strap them together…

I found CATO through a Steam Next Fest in 2024. The first few levels in that demo were promising enough to get me to wishlist the game.

CATO is in a corner of the puzzle game genre I like to call "single-player co-op" since you control two characters at the same time. The cat can run and climb but can't jump, while the toast can jump sideways and up walls but is helpless on ice. When the two are assembled together, their abilities are combined and they also gain infinite jumps. Almost all puzzles in the game involve splitting up and reassembling at the right times.

There's also a basic plot about running out of milk and going out to get more. For a puzzle game, that's enough of an excuse to get the game started. Story is obviously not the reason a puzzle game fan would play this.

Smart puzzle design

I consider the puzzle design in CATO to be exceptionally smart, yet understandable. The levels are laid out so it's easy to tell what they want you to achieve, with each major step of the puzzle placed in a different part of the screen, so you only need to worry about how to solve it and not what your objective even is. While these are often multiple simple steps, the challenge is completing them all at the same time. The most interesting levels remind me of community-made advanced levels for Portal 2, where it's often easy to just reach the exit but tricky to get there with the door held open. A small number of puzzles instead focus on execution challenges, like sensitive timing, but these are thankfully rare.

The game gently teaches its mechanics with just level design and no text. That's the ideal execution of a tutorial, on the level of the greats. It follows the classic pattern: you first get a very easy puzzle using the mechanic, then the puzzle repeats, each time with an extra twist added that makes it harder, guiding you to discover the mechanic's nuances. The game makes good use of its mechanics, exploring each deeply, and in later levels, starts combining them and challenging you to understand how they interact.

There are mechanics like:

• Walls that become solid if the cat is carrying the toast!
• Cheese that is bouncy for the cat but sticky for the toast!
• High-speed pipe transport!
• Multiple toasts!

Overall, CATO isn't too hard of a puzzle game, but there definitely were a few levels that had me sitting still, thinking for a while. There's also a hint system available for most levels, which marks the important places in a level.

Action breaks

The final level of each of the five worlds is an action-focused level instead of a puzzle. Some are runner-style platformers, like Canabalt, which have you dodging obstacles while sliding to the exit. Others are boss fights that feature the main mechanic of that world as the key to beating the boss. None are really that difficult, but they're an adequate change of pace after playing a long chain of puzzle levels. Although five worlds sounds somewhat few, each actually has a lot of levels — about 30 or so in each.

Looks

The art style of the game is pretty interesting. It imitates chunky pixel art with 3D graphics, while maintaining the flat, two-tone shading to sell the pixel art look. But with its 3D art, it gets to have very smooth animations and detailed environments.

Without the obviously artificial pixelation effect, this would have been fine, but unremarkable 3D art. Without the 3D, there may not have been the smoothness in the animation or the flexibility to zoom in and out to appropriately fit levels on screen.

Also, there are skins!

Don't worry, they don't require any money or grinding. You unlock them as rewards for finding in-game secrets. There are separate skins for the cat and the toast, but I find the default toast to be too much fun to switch off of. Despite that, getting these secrets is relevant for achieving…

One hundred percent!

I liked CATO so much I decided to 100% it. I consider this a great honour for a game, since I so rarely bother with full completion. (The previous time I did so was with Grapple Dog in 2023.) That involved finding all the secrets throughout the game. On the level select map, some level icons have a mark indicating there's a secret there. Some secrets just involve going into a hidden passageway, like in Doom or Quake, but accessing others requires using a level's puzzle elements in a counterintuitive way to get the cat and toast into an obscure corner of the level.

Some secrets just contain unlockable skins or easter eggs, but some actually lead to additional, secret levels. More interestingly, they feature a special mechanic that only appears in these secret levels! If you never go for secrets, you would never even know about this mechanic. (Of course, I won't be giving away what this mechanic is.) Most of these secret levels have a similar difficulty as the main levels, but the ones near the end of the game get particularly hard, involving clever usage of the secret mechanic in combination with the other mechanics.

In this video I am doing some changes to my own game. These changes are something like adding sword combat, adding particles and visual buffs, repairing inventory and crafting table. This video also contains discussion about my oncoming challenge video where I do a coding challenge. Please give feedback about your experience a s a viewer! And remember to tell me why you liked or didn't like the video! Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y71h5Vmly-8&t=6s

A friend picked up a copy of Halo MCC yesterday, so we introduced him with Halo 3. We got a group of 4, and eventually 5 together and did a multitude of different game modes. One of the first we did was Juggernaut on Epitaph.

The entire battle ended up staying contained to the little balcony in the screenshot. We'd spawn in, make a break for the balcony, and then kill the juggernaut before having it stolen from ourself.

Our match ended with us all accidentally killing each other at the same time. I hadn't even noticed this until going back through the theater for screenshots, but i thought it was a pretty cool coincidence.

We also did One Flag on Guardian. This game was a lot of fun because being separated into teams we had to strategize really hard. Grenades seemed to hold dominance here too as they could be used to clear a hall before the enemy got to us. Combine that with the AR and short hallways and it was a fun challenge.

The winning point ended up being scored by me, as i flanked around the back and led the other team on a drawn out chase, using the geometry to put distance between us. They didn't realize i was making a break for the half of the map we didn't really go on this round, and by the time they did i was already to the point.

The final match we did was Assault with one bomb on Last Resort. We didn't get off to a great start as my time, who was on the offensive, forgot to grab the bomb. We turned around though and grabbed it without wasting too much time.

We ended up going for the high ground and used the fan blade to ascend up the building. We made a break for the landing and made a slam dunk into the point and deployed a bubble shield to hold it.

Sadly our victory was short lived, as when we were on the defense, We got so preoccupied with one of the enemy team players using themselves as a diversion that we didn't realize another one of them was flanking us with the bomb. By the time i had the thought "Oh shit, i bet he's flanking us with the bomb" he had already planted it. We tried to rush over to defuse it but were too late.

Can't for the life of me figure out how to set up a co-op server despite reading the readme, so I can't vouch for that new feature, but this updated fork is solid for single player.

hey guys sorry its my first time here on lemmy so i am not sure how to use it fully but i've been playing prison acrhitect for a long while though i am finding out i am not too good with designs or money anyone can help me out or tell me how i am doing so far thx :>

Is it just me or you can actually hear Lisa Trevor screaming in the background music for the first fight against Orochi?

#capcom #okami #residentevil

Today's game is Assassin's Creed Shadows. I didn't do any of the main story today and just focused on one of the Legendary Sumi-e. I'm currently in the Autumn Season so it was the fox that i could capture.

I didn't have any synchronization points out in the Region it was in so i had to teleport to one nearby. The one i picked was an Onsen nearby which had this river running through it.

I accidentally took the wrong marker though and went the complete opposite direction than where i meant to go, so instead i went to a synchronization point in the north. It was a waste of time, but i did get this lovely shot of a pond before i fast traveled too the Onsen again.

After setting myself on the right path, i ended up going through this field where i was chased by a Ronin. I ended up ditching him on my horse though because it turns out a horse is faster than a man (who would have guessed?)

I ended up following this stream to my objective, which took me up river. It reminds me a lot of the woods near where i grew up, which had a lot of streams and tall trees.

Finally my objective was reached, which was a tall mountain cliff where the fox would spawn. the issue is that it would only spawn at night and it was only the evening, so i had a bit of time to kill.

I spent the entire time i had just doing a nature photoshoot of the cliffs and just generally exploring the general area. In the camp in the above screenshot i got killed by a Enemy, but luckily the checkpoint didn't send me too far back.

Finally, night time came. I went up to the shrine and the whole thing was lit up with blue light. I snuck up the stairs and observed the Fox chilling out on the cliff. I had to get pretty close to get the screenshot but i got it. I'm a little dissapointed i couldn't get anything more than a drawing of it for my base though. I'd love to have it just chilling out there or as a mount.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28425976

Sign here to support the EU's "STOP destroying videogames"

This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.

Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher.

The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.

Doom (2016) just launched on GOG, and it's on offer. I purchased straight away as I really enjoyed this one. Wasn't expecting to see more Bethesda games on GOG after Microsoft purchases Zenimax.

Like can we make this a more vocal opinion that Triple-A studios/publishers are like legally required to offer a version.. Or what is your take on that, especially if you have a similar opinion with a deviation in execution. let me know why if you dont agree too!

I'd love to have and collect DRM free titles that last even after a platform is gone, also ubi cant pull off clown shows like the crew or whatever racing game they just erased out of power tripping spite

I found my old GameStop receipt from 2006 in my GameCube games.

Man this brings back memories of simpler times.