beard ひげ @beardalaxy@gameliberty.club

i like this video

they actually just went and did that shit

I really want to recommend this game, sing its praises from the rooftops, but I just can't. The racing gameplay is extremely good, with an amazing sense of speed and a high skill ceiling, full of all of those F-Zero stylings that make your heart drop and your body tense up. Even the unexpected combat zones are pretty fun! The music is awesome, the game runs super well (I've got it going at 240 FPS!), the art design is great, and I like the diversity of the characters and vehicles.

Unfortunately, it its current state, there is just a really big problem with polish. The core gameplay is rock solid, but it exists within a bear trap that will bite you on the way in and won't let go. Many players, including myself, have experienced the game going completely black in the options menu and needing to either quit the game or move it to another monitor to bring it back. I had a softlock in a combat zone and there is no option to restart from a checkpoint or anything, so I had to completely quit the game and then launch it again. For whatever reason, there is a boss battle that, upon beating it, completely soft locks the game so I just can't progress through the story whatsoever (and I need to relaunch to even try again and hope that it works... it doesn't). When the player can't even beat your game, you need to fix some things.

On top of some really jarring, obvious bugs, there are some smaller ones that could be overlooked here and there. Collision can be a little spotty, I was going so fast I flew threw a wall once and got DQ'd but I guess you should be hitting into walls anyway. There is also just a lot more downtime in between actual gameplay moments (and even story moments) than I would like. If I want to do some races, I shouldn't have to walk around a small level with nothing else in it for me to get to them. Either let me select the race from the menu, or put something meaningful in that area I have to walk around in. It's weird because there are people to talk to at the beginning of the story mode, and they will set up different races with you that have interesting tidbits to them, but that only happens twice in the entire game and I would have loved to see more stuff like that.

Again, there are some really great things on display here. The tracks are, for the most part, really awesome and fun to race on. I like all the characters a lot, with a soft spot for Wolfman and Digi. The story itself feels a little undercooked and there were a couple moments that left me aghast with how unhinged they were, but it is still intriguing at the very least. I can tell there was a lot of effort put into the lore of XF's universe but unfortunately it doesn't really seem like much of that comes out in the story, which is unfortunate.

But yeah... if I can't even beat the story because the game is literally preventing me from doing so, I can't recommend the game. Not until it gets fixed up. Who knows if that will ever happen, either, because the developer has said he's no longer interested in working on it and already has a new project he's dedicated to. It almost feels like he used the Early Access stage for making sure all of the content was in the game, but not for making sure all of that content was scrubbed of some of these major, glaring issues. I really, really hope he comes back to fix this and I'll definitely update my review if he does.

#beardgamereview

@karn the giant one that makes all of the rules

@snapplo yeah and none of the people upset by it will ever try to do this on their own because they absolutely would not be able to lol. fuck, even if i had the ability to do it i don't think i'd have the willpower to stick with it. shit's still hard.

@TheTeka gimme the tea

@geistigbehindert @Azur_Fenix nintendo's lawfare is just weird in general man. the palworld lawsuit is definitely the most cut and dry egregious one, but outside of that it starts getting so wacky. a lot of what they do actually has legal basis whatsoever but it usually comes down to either A) people being scared of a lawsuit or B) companies wanting to maintain a good relationship with nintendo. so they'll make all these deals behind the scenes and stuff.

then on top of that you have a lot of copyright trolls that just flat out aren't real, pretending to be nintendo. that's how a lot of youtube videos of mods get axed, but then you look at where the mods are being hosted and they have no issues because youtube's copyright system is extremely anti-user and pro-corporation to the point of it being broken. i'm almost certain that a lot of projects that have been shut down over the years weren't actually shut down by nintendo themselves. but they don't really care because they don't really have to care.

as far as emulators go, it's really dicey. some emulators have been axed because they used parts of proprietary nintendo decryption keys and shit. some have been axed because the devs were talking about running pirated games on them. there was one that got shut down more or less because, even though nintendo couldn't do anything to the developer, they made some sort of deal with him (allegedly). but then of course all of those emulators are open source and you have tons of forks pop up and even the most popular replacements get to live on for years and years after that before anything happens to them again.

who knows man, nintendo is fucking strange when it comes to that. decomps though are more or less established to be completely legal as far as i know because they are running on completely custom code and they just take the assets from the original ROM file which you can also acquire legally. nintendo can do shit like, for instance, not allow people to do streams of the melee pc port for tournaments, like they have done with project M and slippi in the past, but even that is super all over the place with whether they are feeling particularly evil or not that day.

AI coding is here to stay. Move it or lose it bitches.

I've never really been able to get into those traditional 2D fighting games and I suck at them, but my roommate bought Avatar Legends and I can tell it's definitely the best in the genre. Still not good at it, and I have very little desire to be good at it especially with so many other games to play, but it seems really good. The animation and characterization are awesome.

Also Rivals of Aether 2 is half off right now BTW.

@Terry i actually do like them but you know, they can't replace an actual burger. no fucking way.

The worst vocal tone you've ever heard but the guy is hitting really high notes so everybody is impressed anyway

@Ronnie21093 i've always wanted an otamatone but like... not enough to buy one. the hatsune miku and kirby ones look funny.

@Deplorable_Degenerate @PNS @echoteecat @ceo_of_monoeye_dating just don't tell them you went to school lol, you can 100% just lie on resumes and applications

@LukeAlmighty I'd like to have one, but yeah, not enough money to justify buying it. I wouldn't play it enough for it to be worth it. I'd probably get more use out of a ps5 and I don't even wanna buy one of those.