Mobile Legends, the game that Riot sued a few times awhile back and has gone on to rank #2 on the Esports charts and was nominated for Esports at last year's Game Awards, has potentially modified stolen artwork from completely independent artists (and other companies, some large and some smaller indie studios) all over their Facebook and YouTube in posts ranging from 2016 to literally this year, as well as sold this art in their game in the past allegedly without ever notifying or paying the artists.

Other larger post showing comparisons of some of this art currently on their Facebook on their sub: r/MobileLegendsGame Post

The people on their sub basically said "we know and we don't care." I'm guessing a lot of these artists though don't currently know about this, especially since in a recent YT investigation into the game, one of the independent artists named “Zeronis” who was allegedly stolen from and had his art used to model a skin off of that was sold in the game said that he was never approached by the creators of the game, was never compensated for their use of his art, and never knew this had happened in the first place. The owners of the game definitely made money off selling this skin and others like it based on it appearing in old footage of the game in matches.

Video: Exposing Mobile Legends
(Section from 9:45 to 10:30)

Not to mention a lot of their trailers on their YouTube plagiarized other game trailers like Elden Ring, Castlevania, and LoL which made a controversy a year ago and those trailers were never taken down.

I'm not making this post to damage this game’s reputation or anything, I’m just posting this here to bring awareness to this and in case there's anything that can be done to help out at least the artists who have come forward saying they were stolen from.

Credit to Glad2be1000 on YT for his investigation and [u/MasterDevelopment481](u/MasterDevelopment481) for discovering the Valorant art.

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/12/22/i-mean-who-doesnt

I found this while rereading the old penny arcade comics of yesteryear. It’s been a good nostalgic ride for me, seeing how gamers reacted to certain announcements and the like. And sometimes they predict some stuff as well.

(So I actually made this post because I had a dream about making it, but I think it's an interesting IRL question anyway lol.)

The explosions in Starfox 64 are incredibly satisfying. The perfectly spherical shape and the huge wooshing sound make them so memorable. Shout-out to when you make the train crash into the factory in Macbeth, gotta be one of the coolest moments in the game.

You can see it about the 0:35 mark here.

I adore the explosion in Smash Bros 64. Not the visual, since it's pretty weak, but the sound effect is amazing. (I love the sounds in Smash 64 in general, they are so over-the-top, but this is about explosions.)

You can see it at about the 2:09 mark here.

The explosions in the first two OddWorld games are pretty good too. Very loud, but what really makes them memorable are the sparks(?) that fly everywhere.

You can see it at about the 25:01 mark here.

With new Mario Titans “leaks” making their rounds, I keep seeing those optimistic few, still holding on to the hope that the game is truly on the way, and it makes me a bit sad for them!

Hindsight is 20/20, and some hoaxes are more believable than others. Looking back, I can’t believe I thought they would put in the work needed to make a fully Paper-Mario-style Smash Bros level with paper versions of all the characters. I was old enough to know better, but I wanted to believe it SO badly, that when the game came out and I explored all the levels, I was surprised to see there was no Glitzville to be found.

Does anyone else remember this hoax?

Are there any hoaxes that you believed were true for longer than you’d like to admit?

I came across this game "The Witness" and I liked that it is difficult while being simple to play. The actual gameplay consists of running around, finding various boards and drawing lines on them. That's really it. Somehow it manages to be deep and rewarding to play even so.

It kind of reminded me in spirit of another difficult/simple game, Myst (an older game but a classic where all you do for gameplay is wander, interact with switches/buttons, and pick up pieces of paper).

I was wondering what other games people had enjoyed that are similarly simple yet difficult.

I'm replaying Sunset Overdrive and I had (almost) forgotten how much fun is to simply move around.

Even without the combat, challenges or anything else, moving around feels great and is it's own reward. It is probably the only open world game where I have ever gone for all the collectibles, side quests, challenges and everything else.

So I'm really looking for more games with such a fun movement.

As examples, I also enjoyed a lot things like Sonic Frontiers, Spider-man...

What's your worst habit in video games? Like, the thing you do that makes you actively worse at the game, but you can't seem to stop doing.

I have two. First, if a boss or enemy can be cheesed, I will do it even when doing so is actively more difficult or annoying than fighting them straight on. In Elden Ring, the putrid avatars in Caelid aren't particularly difficult to fight once you understand their movesets. But they're also standing under cliffs you can shoot them down with arrows, and so long as you don't peak over the edge while they're firing their rays of light, you're completely safe.

This is also a huge slog. Arrows do much less damage than anything else you do. And that's after you pick up the arrow talismans to improve your range and damage as much as possible. I could take one our in a couple of minutes, but I still find myself taking ten to fifteen minutes peppering them with arrows.

My other terrible habit is never using healing items. I will almost always drag myself back to town or the rest point to avoid using them. If it's a permanently consumable item, I will never actually use 'em, out of a misplaced fear that I won't have them when I really need them. I end basically every RPG with an inventory stuffed with healing items and buffs that would have made the whole game so much easier.

For me, it's Euro Truck Simulator 2. I used to genuinely enjoy just driving around, exploring the map and relaxing. But over time, the constant stuttering and performance issues made it harder and harder to enjoy. It got so frustrating that I actually spent weeks reverse-engineering parts of the game's DX12 renderer to figure out what was going wrong. I even documented an engine-side cause of the stuttering, but eventually gave up on the game entirely. At some point I realized I was spending more time investigating performance problems than actually driving trucks XD. And honestly, watching SCS keep releasing DLC while the engine still struggles doesn't exactly make me want to come back. Anyone else had a game they loved slowly turn into something they couldn't stand playing anymore?

1. Pokémon

I love the world, characters, and creature designs of Pokemon. It's such a fun series to imagine fan works for; I would come up with a fake region with its own lore and characters and Pokémon in a heartbeat, because this franchise leaves so much up to the imagination and has infinite potential for stories based on the behaviors of Pokémon and how society and people's lives would be structured around them. It's a shame, then, that nearly every Pokemon game I've tried has bored me to death, be it SoulSilver, Platinum, X, etc. (I haven't tried any of the games past USUM, so take this with a grain of salt).

It's not even necessarily a turn-based combat problem, as I love games like OMORI, Yakuza: Like a Dragon/Infinite Wealth, Expedition 33, and the Persona series; it just feels like there is so much potential that these games aren't living up to, and the creative drive I have about it is a desire to make something more in-depth and engrossing out of it. Being a game for children doesn't mean the writing has to be boring, and I think it would benefit greatly from some modernizations in its UI and combat. The games I listed above manage to make turn-based combat feel really good, and putting aside the real-time elements of E33, it mostly comes down to snappy menus, few pace-breaking text boxes, and some amount of visual flair.

From what I've heard, aside from the technical flaws, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet actually do a pretty good job making the Paldea region and its residents into something rather interesting and engaging, so I might want to check those out at some point.

1. Minecraft

This one is entirely a me problem, I think. In theory Minecraft should be my forever game, with endless creative freedom to build whatever you desire, not to mention the theoretically endless enjoyment of playing with friends. I love knowing about Minecraft, I love seeing others play it, but I have never really enjoyed playing it myself. I don't have an essay for this one.

Do y'all have any games like that?

There’s a lot of stigma around recycling assets in gaming discourse, but sometimes it just makes for a more economical development cycle and ends up being a boon for a franchise.

Take Yakuza, for instance; nearly every game features the district of Kamurocho as a prominent location, and several of the games use the Sotenbori district as well. In the newer games, the Isezaki Ijincho and Honolulu maps were also reused between entries. While this kind of large-scale asset reuse could have made the games feel stale, the Yakuza series’ relatively strict continuity means that we grow up with these districts in a way through experiencing new challenges and meeting new people within them every time.

In Yakuza 0, Kamurocho is gaudy and trashy but incredibly alive and rich with ‘80s flair and nightlife; by Yakuza 6 though, the district has been largely gentrified, and you can feel the influence of the Tojo Clan waning because you have had seven games to experience every incremental change in the background of each game’s unique plot. Judgment shows us a completely different angle of the district, dropping us into a murder mystery with ties to the yakuza, the government, and the medical field; additionally, since Judgment follows a civilian detective/ex-lawyer, that game has a friend system that lets us get to know a lot of the locals of Kamurocho who would have no business in the large-scale yakuza conflicts of the other games.

Likewise, Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Lost Judgment use Ijincho for two entirely different gameplay styles and stories; LaD uses it as a turn-based RPG world where different parts of town have different threat levels, letting the map naturally open up as you level up, while Lost Judgment treats it as a huge playground for your new skateboard movement and using the different parts of the district as settings for the full-game-spanning School Stories side quest.

Do you know any other series that reuse assets to such a great effect?