this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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Palworld, an ARK-like game described as Pokemon with guns, has seen concurrent player numbers swell into record-breaking territory this week. But according to execs behind the game the team is not celebrating, choosing rather to spend the time preparing for an attack from their most feared enemy: Hbomberguy.

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 9 months ago

At press time Pocket Pair says that should Nintendo’s legal team also get involved they have lawyers equal to Nintendo’s but with guns.

Lol

[–] [email protected] 53 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I am so tired of hearing about this game.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Everyone keeps asking me if I want to play or am going to play. Its like dood the game is like Rust. I fucking hate Rust.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Something just puts me off about it, I usually love indie monster collecting games, but I just get off vibes from this one.

I think maybe I played too much Ark to enjoy the survival angle, or the humour reminds me too much of the part of the 90s I'd like to forget

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm just not into the type of content that game provides I think. I have been vibing and playing something called INFRA. You play a civil engineer who goes around taking pictures of safety violations while fixing things like water treatment plants along the way. Its done in the source engine so feels super comfy to play for me as its mostly urban exploration based.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That sounds nice. I do love me the source engine

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago

*a blur zippps past you at three hundred miles an hour. After a moment you realize it was frank bunnyhopping backwards with sub millisecond precision to exloit an infinite movespeed bug*

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

the humour reminds me too much of the part of the 90s I'd like to forget

What is this referencing?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I don't understand why this is a negative thing, especially considering that hexbear is fundamentally about taking an edgy approach to class issues. And presumably we don't have a problem with that

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

Being edgy is making a game about fun little creatures you can actually enslave and make shoot one another. When we say Warren Buffett is a ghoul who should be buried in a pit, that's not edgy because he probably deserves worse.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

edge isn't funny. we like laughing at things. grimdark grim grim dark dark is just exhausting.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

We're not Marxists because Marx was edgy, we are Marxists because he was correct.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

its ancap pokemon.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I feel obligated to plat because my friends gave me a copy. I have other things to do

[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago (1 children)

1 hour into the five hour Palworld video, HBomberguy suddenly appears in a courtroom where he is explaining evidence of various financial crimes to a jury.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I feel like a hbomberguy video would be kind of redundant when the Palworld developers are pointing directly at the media conglomerate across the room and announcing at the top of their lungs "WE'RE COPYING THIS. WE ARE DIRECTLY RIPPING OFF POKEMON BUT EDGY. WE ARE MAKING POKEMON WITH GUNS. WISHLIST ON STEAM TODAY".

Edit: That being said, if Palworld really did rip geometry from pokemon 3D models (and things are looking pretty bad on that front), they have a lot more to worry about than hbomberguy.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Everything I hear about this game doesn't sound real

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago

It's not as weird or funny as it sounds. The devs had another survival crafting game that had been stalled for a few years, so they took that and slapped some pokemons in it and released it as a new game in early access. It's just edgy old millenials being edgy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Everything about the game seems generated by AI. "Design a video game that's open world survival crafting"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

It's like ark, but with pokemon instead of dinosaurs. Not complicated

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (1 children)

On one hand I dont like plagiarism, on the other hand nintendo hasnt done anything good with pokemon in the last 10 years, something like this was spected

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Coromon and Cassette Beasts look great.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago

this is a satire website

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Isn't Ark that game that never left early access, had permanently terrible performance, and released paid dlc while still in EA? Just don't buy EA games

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Gotta say, paltopialand plays on max settings at 142FPS (capped) and hasn’t dropped once. Defjjtley better than Ark on that front.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Ok maybe I missed the entire joke here but what? This isn't funny. Are they missing the point of his plagiarism video entirely for a joke article or what? If anything he would more likely make a Coffeezilla style video after Nintendo if they go after this stupid game.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I have heard that Hard-Drive fired all their good writers like last year.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

It been downhill since Phil Jamesson stopped doing "gamer president"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

I thought they announced they're shifting to a business model based on patreon, unless that was more satire that i misinterpreted while scrolling instagram, lol.

it's sad but spoofy headlines and satire articles about gaming and music don't seem like a great way to make money and keep employees paid in current year, even if they're usually funnier than they should be bawllin-sad

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The worst thing about Palworld is that the monster designs are solid but the game itself seems to be just commentary on Pokemon ☠️

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

the monster designs are solid

I agonized so much over whether or not people were gonna think I was ripping off Pokemon too hard when I made Kor since I used some of the sprites and tiles as reference points; if I'd known the bar was this low then I would've relaxed so much during the dev process.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

I like them but I am usually very critical of clones. I think your effort wasnt wasted

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

But the designs are just reskinned pokemon for the most part. The sheep pal is just wooloo, and the elk is xerneas with a paintover.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah also we have gyarados at home

I think where im at is there isnt a pokemon that isnt already made, pokemon itself already mostly has dud pokemon designs but if you can make something that parallels enough its acceptable to me

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

But it actually is possible to make a monster-collecting game with original designs though. Just look at monster rancher, none of the monsters from that game look like pokemon. It had a very distinct style.

I think pokemon has just monopolized this genre for far too long, which makes it harder for people making this sort of game to imagine something different.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

A monster game with designs like the angels in NGE would be really cool. Get weird with the narrative.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Cassette Beasts has this

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

i missed the plagiarism joke. i thought it was about the devs crypto/NFT bullshit

i've played a fair bit of the game. it's fun and worth pirating to try. no way in hell is it worth 30$.

also the edgy stuff isn't really a big part of the game. just marketing. so far i've only found 2 pals that shoot guns out of the 50 or so i've discovered

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

bazinga vibes

I think I'll just continue pirating pokemon

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Ive been havin fun with it Im surprised to see how negative these comments are

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

If you like it, don't let us ruin your fun. Everyone has different tastes.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Please let me ruin your fun. It's the only effect on this world I'm capable of. Otherwise I'm just a ghost poster.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Same, it kimd of feels like most have fell for the marketing and not actually played/done their own research. There's no mention of the multiplayer save disassociation bug, or any of the other few well known issues among palworld players right now - which are the main things I would expect to be highlighted in a negative thread about the game...

The main criticisms seem to be the game being "edgy" and "dark"... but it's honestly only as edgy and as dark as you make it. Admittedly this has put off a number of people who would otherwise have probably enjoyed the game just fine. It's not easy to come across the dark parts of the game, and even if you do, lets say for example you successfully catch a human, the game will warn you about it being forbidden, and you can't even teach them new skills. In other circumstances you will get a wanted level, and the in game "mercenaries" will hunt and kill you.

I personally have been playing for hours and its a ton of fun - a lot of the mechanics have been well thought through and there's a surprising level of depth - some of the playthroughs i've seen haven't even scratched the surface of what is possible. IMO pocketpair pretty much gave players exactly what was promised, and then a whole lot more. A few of us have been waiting on this game since 2021, and are very happy with what was delivered

The same way Maxis sat on SimCity for years, and got rugpulled by Paradox's CS, honestly seems inevitable for companies like Gamefreak/Pokemon who have sat on their franchise for years without trying/improving things at all. If you don't listen to your fans they will not wait forever for a real, open world alternative without sudden battle environment switching, actual animations and expressions, and complete freedom of movement during battles. The only thing Palworld has in common with Pokemon really is just the monsters and the process of catching them... everything else is completely different, and that's good.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah if this game was "edgy" the pals would be punched full of bullet holes and lying in gorey pools of blood or exploding like fo3. Its not edgy, really, at all. Its just got guns in it??

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Leaning into the forced labor and slavery part is what I think is edgy. It's an opinion, can't tell someone what's too edgy for them lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Having played many hours, the game isn't like that at all just the marketing, I haven't really seen more emphasis on it being slavery or forced labor than any other game where you control creatures

Not trying to tell anyone what's too much for them, just mean to share my experience

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Yeah they made the first trailer a bit dark and edgy but that was just to generate controversy to get people talking about it, which clearly worked extremely well

Every comment I read about the actual game being edgy just has me like wtf-am-i-reading

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

If you have fun with the game it’s fair! I just have to agree with some people here that the vibes are a little too off for me to enjoy. A lil too edgy for me sadly.

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