"aRe wE bEiNg tOo hArD oN lIvE sErViCe gAmEs?"

Complete, asinine headline: "As Highguard stumbles out the gate after weeks of criticism, are we being too hard on live service games?"

Betteridge's law of headlines is absolutely in play on this hadal horseshit.

"'It's easy to decry live service games as awful - a waste of time and money and development resources - when you focus in on just the rancid stuff," reckons Eurogamer's Connor Makar..."

It's all "rancid stuff," you clownshoes chucklefuck, including the ones you tried to somehow use as counterexamples. The article mostly continues to tailspin into the ground after that. More whiffs of "wOn'T sOmEbOdY pLeAsE tHiNk oF tHe pOoR dEvs???!!1!1!??/!" in this one, too. They pay lip service to playing devil's advocate for a bit, but... fucking meh. Fie, even.

"As Connor puts it, 'Anyone who pretends this culture of negativity around live service games has emerged out of nowhere has had their head in the sand', and that means developers should probably accept their cool new live service game is riding in on a tide of well-earned cynicism. But does that mean we shouldn't at least give them the benefit of the doubt before damning them to the grave?"

Fuck yes it absolutely does mean that, you gormless git. They're not worth being given any benefit of the doubt.

My not at all humble opinion is that gamers, on the whole, are not being anywhere even remotely close to hard enough on them. It's just like every other dumbfuck thing that was ramrodded into existence by the video game industry over the past three-plus decades or so. A few people (e.g. myself, owsf2000, etc.) have been ranting about all this shit since it first appeared, knowing it was dogshit from the very get go. But far too many gamers have had their lips Gorilla Glued to the sewer pipe for years and have happily sucked the shit down... until they finally started to realize that the shit actually tasted like, you know, shit. They tried to tear their lips away from the sewer pipe, but by then, it was far too late. Even if they managed to stop willingly swallowing what was being force-spewed into them, they were still drowning in the shit that had been slowly filling the room for so long. "GaaS"/"live service" games are merely the latest in a long string of similar sewage being pumped out by the modern video game industry. It's just that "GaaS"/"live service" games are a particularly turgid turd to try to choke down, and some of those still in the room with the sewer pipe are finally starting to get tired of treading fetid fecal water, as the ceiling just gets ever closer, and they might even be starting to look for an exit. (Yeah, wishful thinking on my part, I know.)

A huge part of the reason for why these problems persist, of course, is sycophantic, industry-glazing articles like this one.

"Today In 'Okay, What the Actual F**k'"

A post on Whatever dot Scalzi dot Com.

John Scalzi is in the Epstein files... but, thankfully, not for the reasons one might think.

Chicory: A Colorful Tale

Watch on YouTube

Chicory: A Colorful Tale is available now on PS5, PS4, Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PC, and Mac!

Chicory: A Colorful Tale is a top-down adventure game in a coloring book world where you can draw on anything. Use your painting powers to explore new places, solve puzzles, help your friends, and change the world! It's a big job...but you're ready for it! Probably!

www.chicorygame.com

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Just finished this game after what Steam says was 26.4 hours, spaced out over the past week or two. This included getting all the achievements, which mostly involved finding all the gift boxes (most of which contained clothing) and literal pieces of trash strewn around the world (traded for decor items which are also among the collectibles needed for 100% completion).

The gist of the story is that you're the janitor for the current "Wielder," i.e. the person who is in charge of a magical paint brush that is the sole source of color in the world. At the very start of the game, all color is suddenly removed from the world, and when you go looking for the Wielder to try to find out what happened, you find the paint brush laying abandoned on the floor and decide to pick it up. And it goes on from there. Let's just say, despite the overall cute nature of the game, it can get kind of deep/dark at times, too.

It's a top down action/puzzle game, sort of like the 2D The Legend of Zelda games, just with a paint brush instead of a sword. There's very little combat in the game (outside of some boss fights, there's no combat at all). There are areas of the world that are locked off until you acquire the appropriate traversal ability you need in order to reach those new areas. There's no RPG elements (stats, exp, etc.) and there's not even a lifebar. Not even in the boss fights, really, as you're allowed one hit and the second one will just kick you out of the fight for a bit before putting you right back into it at the start of whatever phase the boss had been when you took the second hit, which usually isn't far back at all, and even if you take a hit, if you go long enough without taking the second hit, the first one comes back after a bit (indicated by the expression on your PC's face). (EDIT) This can be changed in the settings to allow more hits or even infinite hits or even disabling damage entirely. (/EDIT)

There are also some sidequest-type activities, the biggest of which is probably the art classes you can take in your hometown, in which you are literally given a task to paint something (which can be a bit of a pain using the mouse, to be honest, but it's not too bad, since it doesn't actually matter what you draw at all). Others include things like delivering pieces of mail, taking photos of certain areas (after you've colored them up a bit), solving a small mystery in a hotel by finding "evidence," finding hidden kittens (called "children" by the game), and other cute things like that.

The big thing about this game is the ability to paint the world as you see fit. It's not something that's required to be done, outside of a few instances where a NPC will ask you to do something like paint their house or whatever (and even then you don't have to actually do it, though sometimes they'll give you something for it). I kind of neglected it a lot when I was just getting started, but by the end, I found myself coloring in stuff more and more, just for the heck of it. (Finding a "fill tool" made it a fair bit easier to do so. Though you technically start with that ability already, by simply holding down the mouse button [on PC], being able to do it with a single click was more convenient. Also the fill tool actually did the job faster than the holding-the-mouse-button default ability did.) I never went nuts with actually drawing stuff free-form in the world like what is shown in the above embedded trailer, though. Interestingly, the game seems to remember every single brush stroke you ever make, because when looking at, for example, paintings you've done for the art classes, it will show you a fast-forwarded version of the painting being made, exactly as you had made it.

The music is pretty good, though I won't say there were any standout tracks that I particularly noticed, in this case, but there weren't any that were especially offensive to my ears, either. It was all good, just in general.

This game had been on my radar for years, and when I saw it included in a Humble Bundle back in December, I bought the bundle (not just for this game, but this game was one of the big ones in the bundle that I wanted).