Sweet Baby Inc. and the Steam Curator Group Conspiracy - The company that is responsible for the diarrheic video game writing.

[Oliver Onions]

I can pretty much guarantee a lot less people would even give it the time of day if it would look like your average disney capeshit slop.

for example:

Again, I don't think this is a fair comparison, because those models are from Marvel's Avengers which was a Concord-tier level of shit and only survived longer because it had Marvel branding on it, even if it was the stunt doubles of the characters.

Sadly we don't have a time machine so we can't go back and see how Avengers would have performed if they'd paid for the likeness rights of the MCU actors or used a stylized Fortnite look, but I'm confident it would have still flopped because it was painfully obvious it was an Uncharted clone that completely changed gears mid-development to be a live service cash-grab. Kind of like Suicide Squad in reverse.

borderlands still sells well enough even with it's abysmal writing.

That's because it was the first FPS looter-shooter and it's still fun to play (I just turn the dialogue off and listen to podcasts). Borderlands has the same advantage Overwatch does in that it was the first to really do what it did, and given how badly BlizzAcc fumbled Overwatch I'll be interested to see if Borderlands 4 performs well now that we have better alternatives.

I personally thought Borderlands 3 was laughably behind the times in terms of design, but it sold well enough for a sequel (two if you count Tiny Tina's Wonderlands). Maybe after 15 years and 6 full-length games they'll finally figure out how to let you view multiple mission objectives on the map simultaneously.

 

[p1138]

Sadly we don't have a time machine so we can't go back and see how Avengers would have performed if they'd paid for the likeness rights of the MCU actors or used a stylized Fortnite look, but I'm confident it would have still flopped because it was painfully obvious it was an Uncharted clone that completely changed gears mid-development to be a live service cash-grab. Kind of like Suicide Squad in reverse.

We don't, however even once the game launched and people saw gameplay I seriously doubt it would have helped much if the initial trailers didn't generate the kneejerk "who the fuck are these people?" reactions. Even purely from a gameplay standpoint, there was a period early on where the small playerbase it had seemed to be having fun playing it, so the devs nerfed the shit out of xp gains just when the remaining playerbase was starting to say positive things about it.

https://gamerant.com/marvels-avengers-dev-explains-xp-nerf/

Using a bullshit excuse of "players are inundated with too much to do" bullshit, it was a lame attempt at stretching out play times with zero consideration put into the fact that the remaining player count was miniscule already anyway. And that decision had nothing to do with DEI/SBI/whatever, it was purely the same top down demand from execs that is seen in practically every live service game that demands developers go around nerfing everything the moment people start having fun doing something in the game.

It took the helldivers 2 devs 6 months of nerfing shit and watching their playerbase dwindle before someone at that studio pulled their head out of their ass and demanded they reverse course, which actually did breathe some life into the community for that game.

 

[Oliver Onions]

It took the helldivers 2 devs 6 months of nerfing shit and watching their playerbase dwindle before someone at that studio pulled their head out of their ass and demanded they reverse course, which actually did breathe some life into the community for that game.

So is Helldivers 2 good again? Because I'd been thinking of picking it up but I was put off by the endless waves of negative PR surrounding the game.

 

[p1138]

So is Helldivers 2 good again? Because I'd been thinking of picking it up but I was put off by the endless waves of negative PR surrounding the game.

I don't know about good again, but it got a fairly big balance update back in September or so that boosted its player count for a while after someone realized there was nothing left to nerf and just buffed like 40 weapons and shit instead. And I guess they added their new illumiwhatever race earlier this month that finally got the player count back above 100k for a bit.

But more to the point, the helldivers devs after doing what every other live service dev does(nerf shit in an attempt to increase play time) finally saw some more success after just doing the opposite. That didn't happen to the stupid Avengers game until it was clearly dead with no chance of revival and they just shut off the mtx store and let the couple hundred remaining players fuck around with some skins and shit back in 2023 I think it was? The game was fucked from the start, and either the publisher or upper management at Crystal Dynamics drove it into the dirt, but I'm pretty sure that would have happened regardless of what the characters looked like.

 

[Shieldman]

Talking about Marvel Rivals, around Christmas, people discovered that it has the typical chinese censorship

First I heard about it was on this Asmon clip
Arch seemingly is the only one from the griftosphere that picked this up recently. At least to my knowledge, since I have stopped following most of them.

It only takes a non-ugly design to slide a turd to 'our side', it seems.

 

[Oliver Onions]

The game was fucked from the start, and either the publisher or upper management at Crystal Dynamics drove it into the dirt

I'd put my money on Square Enix being to blame, as they similarly fucked up Shadow Of The Tomb Raider with their retarded decisions.

 

[3deadniggers]

That's because it was the first FPS looter-shooter and it's still fun to play (I just turn the dialogue off and listen to podcasts). Borderlands has the same advantage Overwatch does in that it was the first to really do what it did, and given how badly BlizzAcc fumbled Overwatch I'll be interested to see if Borderlands 4 performs well now that we have better alternatives.

What borderlands alternatives are there? Open world looter shooters with a mix of on foot and vehicle sections intermixed together isn't a common design idea. Far cry's weird DLC/spin offs is the only thing close to it.

 

[Oliver Onions]

What borderlands alternatives are there? Open world looter shooters with a mix of on foot and vehicle sections intermixed together isn't a common design idea. Far cry's weird DLC/spin offs is the only thing close to it.

Destiny 2. It's a looter shooter with large biomes, XP and skill trees, but with much better gunplay and movement. It doesn't have the same mission format Borderlands does, but it's all just an excuse to shoot stuff and the range of activities and enemy variety is much more interesting in Destiny 2 so it's more engaging to play (at least until the inevitable live service burnout sets in).

Bungie also had the good sense to completely gut the terrible writing and play to the game's strengths, instead of doubling down on being obnoxious like Gearbox.

 

[3deadniggers]

Destiny 2. It's a looter shooter with large biomes, XP and skill trees, but with much better gunplay and movement. It doesn't have the same mission format Borderlands does, but it's all just an excuse to shoot stuff and the range of activities and enemy variety is much more interesting in Destiny 2 so it's more engaging to play (at least until the inevitable live service burnout sets in).

Bungie also had the good sense to completely gut the terrible writing and play to the game's strengths, instead of doubling down on being obnoxious like Gearbox.

Did they add proper vehicles or is it still just your speeder bike? Destiny is Halo without the vehicles and I haven't seen much about them in Destiny 2. Borderlands and Halo both use a lot of vehicle combat sections to break up the shooting.

 

[Asian tech support]

Did they add proper vehicles or is it still just your speeder bike? Destiny is Halo without the vehicles and I haven't seen much about them in Destiny 2.

Both Destiny games have vehicles but they suck ass and there was only one multiplayer mode (in Destiny 1) that used them, which was fun and I wish D2 brought it back. Putting aside the copious amounts of GAAS bullshit, Destiny gameplay blows Borderlands out of the water, though it's not as good as the older Halo games.

 

[Looney Troons]

Highly recommend Destiny 2 if you mute all but the sound effects and put on some tunes you like to listen to. Ignore whatever semblance of lore they try to weave altogether. It’s stupid. Game has incredibly satisfying gunplay and sound design. Everything else about the game is piss though. The writing over the past few years has flirted with that bad Borderlands style of writing where characters say too much without saying anything at all.

 

[Frosted Snowflakes]

Smash JT may be late to the party, but he is reminding everyone about South of Midnight's Community Manager Katie Robinson, aka PikaChulita, and how she's a racist bitch towards white male gamers from the Refinery29 article 3 years ago.
(Archive)



EDIT: Then you got Sweet Baby Inc defenders Alyssa Mercante and Dave Rivera stalking Grummz and everyone else opposing Sweet Baby Inc.

 

[Shaneequa]

Highly recommend Destiny 2 if you mute all but the sound effects and put on some tunes you like to listen to.

Destiny 2 has the worst user interaction interface / hub worlds of any game i've ever played in my entire life. Missions, Strikes, Bounties, Gambits, nothing is normalized and everything is a confusing mess. I literally played 300 strikes (of the same like, 5 15-minute campaigns) because it was one of the few mechanics that was straightforward and minimized the amount of time I wasn't running and shooting.

 

[Hermiöne Granger]

Despite what some may claim online, Sweet Baby Inc. has not gone anywhere, nor have they lost developer support. Here's one of their writers confirmed to be involved with an unannounced Remedy game. Can't wait for the Max Payne Remake with now second protagonist race-swapped girl boss Mona Sax.

 

[Oliver Onions]

Borderlands and Halo both use a lot of vehicle combat sections to break up the shooting.

Can't speak for Halo cause I never played it, but the vehicle sections in Borderlands have always sucked ass, the only reason to use vehicles is to cover long (empty, boring) distances or to take out trash mobs or the unbalanced vehicles that would otherwise one-shot you.

It's been a while since I played Destiny 2 but I remember it having vehicles other than the bikes but I think they were specific to certain events. I didn't miss them because, unlike Borderlands, it's fun and responsive to move your character in Destiny 2.

Destiny 2 has the worst user interaction interface / hub worlds of any game i've ever played in my entire life.

This is true, I really wish they had an option to disable the hub and just have a menu I could navigate to do what I want. I can't remember if they fixed it from Destiny 1, but it was also a huge pain in the ass always having to return to whoever gave you your daily quests to turn them in and get more instead of cashing them in instantly when you complete them.

So much time wasted on boring admin, but I still think the core gameplay is a lot of fun, and the raids are actually interesting and require teamwork, not just surviving endless waves of trash mobs.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Supposedly the new grift is in. "Gaming while Black", a crowd funding campaign for a racist film that, you guessed it, advocates for black people to consult on games writing.

https://twitter.com/JayViperTV/status/1876052025739247795

View attachment 6828266
View attachment 6828274

There is more in her thread, but the usual names pop up. Including Naughty Dog, Rooster Teeth, and Compultion Games (a SBI client).

Bungie also had the good sense to completely gut the terrible writing

Destiny originally had (supposedly) amazing lore and story, but it was cut 11 months before the deadline by Bungie management, causing the writer to quit. What we have left is cobbled together from what little remains.

 

[Oliver Onions]

Destiny originally had (supposedly) amazing lore and story, but it was cut 11 months before the deadline by Bungie management, causing the writer to quit. What we have left is cobbled together from what little remains.

That's funny, I was thinking more about how Destiny 2 launched with a full story-based campaign complete with cutscenes and the voice talents of Bill Nighy which, as far as I could tell when I replayed it years later, is now completely removed from the game.

You just get airdropped into a random biome now and are expected to get on with it.

 

[30+GameOvers]

depends who you ask, most of the MCU phase 4 and 5 has been flops, as has been most shit on TV. people often blamed "superhero fatigue" just like "hero shooter fatigue" after concord flopped, but then you have stuff like deadpool vs wolverine becoming "the 20th-highest-grossing film of all time, the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time and the second-highest-grossing film of 2024."

Speaking of which, is this an independent movie or do I need to sit thru several MCU movies worth of autism to get the events of this movie? I checked out after Civil War since I saw the writing on the wall, and I was absolutely right about the quality decline since then.
Speaking of Marvel games, has anyone played Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 on the switch? I heard it's one of the rare modern unpozzed games, frankly I don't trust these kinds of claims. That new free to play game was supposed to be an unpozzed game as well, but it's full of GAAS and chink spyware poz.

So is Helldivers 2 good again? Because I'd been thinking of picking it up but I was put off by the endless waves of negative PR surrounding the game.

General rule of thumb is that if they screwed you once, they will screw you twice. Leave it and play something else.

It only takes a non-ugly design to slide a turd to 'our side', it seems.

Coomers aren't part of "our side', whatever that means. Identify and remove them immediately, thankfully they aren't hard to find.

 

[The Token Ethnic]

Speaking of Marvel games, has anyone played Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 on the switch? I heard it's one of the rare modern unpozzed games, frankly I don't trust these kinds of claims. That new free to play game was supposed to be an unpozzed game as well, but it's full of GAAS and chink spyware poz.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with musou games, but it's a brawler that focuses on older comic stories while adding newer Marvel movie stuff to the roster. You can unlock characters, but it's worth picking up if you enjoy beating up enemies. As for Deadpool vs. Wolverine, you can watch it as is. It references older stuff in a dismissive way. Safe, corporate approved jabs towards the franchises.

 

[30+GameOvers]

I'm not sure if you're familiar with musou games, but it's a brawler that focuses on older comic stories while adding newer Marvel movie stuff to the roster. You can unlock characters, but it's worth picking up if you enjoy beating up enemies. As for Deadpool vs. Wolverine, you can watch it as is. It references older stuff in a dismissive way. Safe, corporate approved jabs towards the franchises.

It was made by Team Ninja too. See, THIS is a good example of a good modern Marvel game, not "GAAS Chinese spyware that lets me have tiddies!"

Supposedly the new grift is in. "Gaming while Black", a crowd funding campaign for a racist film that, you guessed it, advocates for black people to consult on games writing.

Figures, I've been seeing this everywhere these days. Absolutely stay on alert, SBI is still here, even if they're not using the name anymore. There must be dozens of similar companies out there that are just as bad.