It’s been a long time since I really enjoyed playing an RPG
In the last few years, I’ve been feeling frustrated by the lack of options regarding computer RPGs (or CRPGs, for short). It’s not that there aren’t good games out there, but it seems they were never as good as the “classic ones”. I thought I had just lost the ability to enjoy them or was hit by the nostalgia-inducing disease “they-don’t-make-them-as-good-anymore”.
But then I played Disco Elysium.
Quick tip on how to create lo-fi sounds from hi-fi samples and instruments
Some weeks ago I was looking into some of Arturia’s less talked synth emulations and found a great video about the Farlight CMI V. The video is quite long, but the stuff about sampling and resynthesis caught my eye since I never really thought about it.
Basically, it is possible to drag and drop your own samples in the CMI V to use them. …
It’s not as hard as it seems
Last year, I decided to learn how to create music using my computer. I’m an amateur guitarist (sort of) and didn’t know anything about music production, so I set off to learn what I could in my spare time. There are two articles on Medium where I talk about how it was (here and here). I’m still learning stuff, and the process has been incredibly fun and fulfilling.
However, I don’t expect to become a celebrity or to live off of music, but it’s nice to know that something I created for myself is floating around the internet, with people…
It turned out to be really fun
Last year, I wrote about how I tried to learn to make lo-fi music as someone who didn’t know anything about music production. You can read about it here. I ended up buying a MIDI controller and set out to discover how to use virtual instruments and other resources to make better low-quality songs.
Between a full-time job and college (I’m in my 30s, but still an undergrad), messing with things 30 minutes at a time in the free time, I believe I succeeded in that. I’m still pretty much an amateur and still do a lot of things by…
I think it’s a bad idea
Note: the screenshots from the Steam store were taken during a sale.
A few days ago I read an article here about how Paradox Interactive, the developer famous for its grand strategy games, is thinking about adopting a new selling model. The reason behind it is: their games have too many DLCs, and to buy a whole game pack would be prohibitively expensive. The article says that, for example, all of Crusader Kings 2 DLCs would cost over 300 USD. I went to Steam to check it and… it is correct.
Future releases might merge sequel and prequel in the same game
Path of Exile is a popular free-to-play (F2P) online ARPG. It built up its success on the vacuum left by Diablo 3 when it was released and poorly received. It promised “old-school” gameplay and delivered it — although the game also became famous for its humongous passive skill tree.
Now, six years later, they announced Path of Exile 2 , a game with an improved engine, seven campaign acts, new classes, new skill gem system “and much more”. Except that it will share the first Path of Exile’s game client, and will be launched as an update.
Revisiting this old gem is like meeting an old friend: weird at first, but surprisingly nice
There are some games you just can’t play enough, it always makes you want to come back. With the “games as a service” industry we have nowadays (you can read what I think about it here), this is expected, as the game can always morph into something else during its lifetime.
However, there are still games outside of this spectrum that calls for you to play it more, even when there’s nothing new to see.
For me, Sacred 2 is one of those games.
Don’t get me wrong: Sacred 2 is a deeply flawed game, a charming one at the…
The “fun factor” should be important, but there’s no clear way to measure it
How much a game is worth is a question that plagues developers and consumers alike. For the developers, it’s obvious: the worth of a game should be enough to cover the development costs and make a profit, so the company can still keep making games. This estimation would probably involve a minimum number of units sold in a given time — like one year, for example — and the marketing effort.
There are also some “unwritten standards”, so to speak, that impose some price limitations. A 2D indie game would never sell that well if its priced at 60 US…
Note: I don’t know anything about music production
Update: I wrote a follow-up piece about how things went 8 months later. You can read it here.
If you spend any time on the internet, you probably heard about ChilledCow’s “lofi hip hop radio — beats to relax/study to”, a 24/7 LoFi hip-hop stream on YouTube. At the time it went live, people looking for non-intrusive music to listen to while doing focus-heavy activities flocked to the channel. Soon after, other equally good channels popped up and, for a moment, LoFi hip-hop music was popular. …
Sadly, it’s buried beneath hundreds of hours of gameplay
Warframe (official website) is a free-to-play third-person shooter with “space ninjas”. It’s a really, really good game considering its price — which is none.
Most people, when playing the game for the first time, get overwhelmed by the large amount of content it has and stop playing as soon as they receive a quest to do something they don’t understand (“What does ‘fuse a mod’ means?”, “How do I get mods?”). And that’s unfortunate because, underneath the myriad of complex and overlapping systems — and really good gameplay — , there’s a great story waiting to be told.
They were…
Loke
Loves video games, music, and short stories.
