I wouldn’t worry. Dread was extremely well received, and set up a big plot hook for a continuation.

I think you’re describing the Nintendo DS.

Kirby Air Riders definitely feels like it keeps that spirit alive. The game could’ve just been City Trial and I would’ve paid $70 just to play City Trial, but they packed everything else in there too because they could.

The Fiend’s Cauldron from Kid Icarus Uprising. At the start of a stage, you have to wager currency on how high of a difficulty you want to attempt, on a sliding scale from 0.0 to 9.0. Higher difficulties cost more to play, and if you fail, you lose your bet and the difficulty drops if you choose Continue. It’s an interesting system for how it forces you to check your ego and self-evaluate just how much you think you can handle.

TF2 was the original gacha game.

If I’m going to put 100+ hours into a game, there better be a setting to mute BGM, because no matter how good the OST is I will eventually tire of it and want to listen to something else.

Grinding evasion by dual wielding shields and attacking yourself is peak game design.

If you’d read the article, Valve says they’re working with anticheat devs to come up with a solution together. This can only happen with their cooperation, if Valve somehow could bypass it on their own that would represent a vulnerability that should and would get patched.

TBH, I kinda get the feeling that’s what most of the hype surrounding the Machine is. People hoping it sells well, but not necessarily people planning to buy one for themselves.

If devs want to support one, it’ll be no problem to support the other. But I doubt devs who already refused to support one will suddenly change their minds.

I wouldn’t expect the Machine to be any more popular than the Deck, which already wasn’t enough to convince holdouts. In fact I would bet the Machine will sell much less than the Deck, since that had a more unique niche carved out for it.

Points of no return and anything else that’s permanently missable. No, I am not doing a second playthrough of a 100 hour JRPG.

That would be the original Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan

Portrait of Ruin

As someone who played later entries first and then went back to SotN, IMO it’s a bit rough around the edges in comparison. Still a fantastic game, but I think later games managed to improve on it.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. IMO this is where the series peaked, perfected the formula and delivered a game packed with several large maps and three sets of bonus characters to replay the game with.

The memestock thing started because people realized they could try to make a quick buck by betting against those who were shorting the stock. But the stock was being heavily shorted for a reason, GameStop is a dying business, one that likely would’ve gone bankrupt by now if the apes hadn’t rushed to prop it up. Anyone who didn’t cash out at the peak, anyone who seriously believes GameStop has a long-term future, is a sucker.

Legally speaking, you own the physical cartridge, but you only own a license to the software on the cartridge.

Practically speaking, no one will break into your house to control what you do with the cartridge.

Console manufacturers sell at a loss because they need to sell the console first before they can sell anything else. They can expect to make that money back on software the user could not have bought without the console.

Valve doesn’t need people to buy Steam Machines to get them to start using Steam. In fact, I suspect most units sold will be to users who are already invested in the ecosystem. Selling at a loss would just be a straight loss to them.

Two years ago, one of my favorite games made some very minor cosmetic tweaks, and that was enough to attract a horde of post-Gamergaters crying that this is the downfall of western civilization. Two years later, the board for that game is still under seige by trolls that have rendered it unusable for anyone who actually wants to talk about the game. Every now and then a Valve mod will lock one thread, and then the trolls just make another and it continues.