I know it’s not going to happen, but a Witcher 4 where you’re playing as Letho out in the eastern lands is my absolute dream. He’s a great character with strong main character energy, and he’s also CDPR original content so doing it that way lets them play looser with story and characters without having to trample over the lore.
I remember the good old days of being super excited every time a new PCGamer magazine arrived in the mailbox and you’d get a fresh CD with it stuffed full of the hottest demos to try. Good times.
Impeccable taste, DS1 Great Scythe has such a fantastic moveset. Is it your first time playing?
I was moreso upset at the outdated pearl clutching of the olympic committee and the complete lack of engagement with actual esports, instead trying to… find mobile games tangentially related to existing olympic sports…?
I didn’t know it existed so I had to read up on it real quick. Honestly makes my blood boil a little bit, especially stuff like blanket excluding FPS games because they’re “too violent”. Are we still in the nineties?
Honestly, the Larian writing style and humour would have probably been a better fit for Fallout.
I haven’t read the design docs for Van Buren myself, were there enough in there to actually build a game out of or is this project more fanfiction and educated guesswork?
I also dislike it, but it’s easy to see why. Once something is both this widespread and user friendly it will become increasingly more popular in a positive feedback loop. Easier onboarding is so valuable compared to having to teach people your in-house engine.
I’m afraid we’ll only see more Unreal games in the future.
Spaceballs is a timeless classic.
Probably won’t do a complete playthrough using this, but would be fun to screw around a bit as Letho and live out my fantasy of him being the protagonist of the next Witcher game.
Ghost of Tsushima is one of the most overrated games of all time. It’s a perfectly fine experience carried by solid combat and high polish, but far from being one of the best games of all time. The writing and acting is monotonously dour and the quest design is uninspiring, which wears you out because the game is also way too long for what little variety it offers. The open world is also your bland, boring, garden variety Ubisoft style.
Romances in BG3 are poorly written and realized and detract from the quality of the game. BG3 in general is merely “fine for a video game” in terms of writing. People also let the game get away with murder in terms of how much it falls apart in the third act.
Cyberpunk 2077 - despite all its flaws - is CDPR’s best game.
Don’t know why I’m not hyped about this game. It should appeal to me. I love a cyberpunky dystopia, retro-futurism is perhaps my favourite aesthetic and early 2000s influences should be prime nostalgia bait for me. But I’ve watched some trailers and it just isn’t hitting the spot for me. It looks like it’s going for more comedy, so maybe the humour comes through better in the actual game?
Can someone who played it fill me in? Is it actually good? Is the combat actually good? I heard mixed things from people during the betas.
My first exposure was when DDO went from subscription model to free-to-play but with microtransactions in 09.
At the time I thought it was a great idea as it ended up cheaper to sustain for me than paying monthly (since many dungeons were skippable and you could also earn cash shop currency by grinding) which led me to have a confusingly positive association with the concept of microtransactions for quite a while.
I’m happy for the people who enjoy it but I’m also very glad I got off this train. Sounds like it was at the right time, at least for me.
The graphics update looks good though and was sorely needed!
From looking at the GOG store it doesn’t seem to be bundled with any patch, which is actually unusual for GOG. If you’re interested I heartily recommend Restoration Project, Updated or RPU for short. It’s a combined unofficial patch/cut content restoration that’s very vanilla friendly and tidies up a lot of stuff left unfixed in the last official patch.
Yeah those Wanamingos are scary in the early game, definitely a place to come back to later. Armour can be tough to get as it doesn’t typically drop as random loot. There are two leather armours for sale in Klamath I think if you’ve gotten a bit of money now.
I’m glad you’re enjoying Fallout 2, it’s probably my all time favourite Fallout! Are you playing with the Restoration Project?
I know exactly what you mean by that early game bottleneck. FO2 can be rough in the early stages between lack of equipment and the comically unbalanced random encounters. It usually swings the other way once you can survive big encounters and sell the looted weapons after.
How far have you gotten?
Instead of jumping on the Elden Ring DLC I’ve continued to be addicted to Esports Godfather to an almost worrying degree.
It’s the clear standout surprise hit of the year for me so far, coming out of absolutely nowhere and ending up being my favourite game in quite a while. It’s a MOBA-themed deckbuilder/autobattler/team management game, and while that sounds like a hot mess it actually plays really well - at least once you get past the initial information overload.
There are lots of fun interactions between cards, items, hero abilities and player abilities which in itself creates great replayability, and constantly changing rulesets keeps things fresh even during a run. The Backpack Battles esque training minigame itself is super fun to optimise when you start getting deep into a run and have more complex blocks to play with.
I heartily recommend it if you like deckbuilders (some passing knowledge of MOBAs might help). It’s only €16 on Steam, and there is a free demo that covers the first couple of hours of a run. I recommend playing with AI difficulty on maximum for both card playing and ban/pick for the best experience (the game is a little too easy by default).
That was in my OP though, that most games can be thought of as puzzle games with extra steps.
I just don’t get where you’re getting “most games” from. If you would have phrased it like “many games can be viewed as puzzle games if you really think about it” you would have maybe had more people agree with you.
I understand your reductive approach - it’s just that there are so many games it doesn’t apply to that I can never agree with “most games”.
If you have 2 minutes to solve a puzzle, is it no longer a puzzle game?
Yes, clearly. It still behaves the way a puzzle - or puzzle game - would: knowledge of the solution trivialises the content. It’s just a puzzle game with a timer.
If moving certain colored pieces requires a button combo or sequence, instead of a simple action, is this no longer a puzzle game?
Depends on how the combo works. Is there an element of skill involved? If it’s like a rhythm game I would just call it a puzzle/rhythm game. Otherwise it’s just a puzzle game with extra steps.
For me, if the main challenge of the game is figuring out the puzzle, then it’s mainly a puzzle game. If a measure of skill is required in the actual execution of beating the game it is no longer a pure puzzle game - but it can still contain puzzle elements of course.
EDIT: I would agree that Tetris is not a puzzle game.
Knowing the optimal thing to do can be seen as but a higher order puzzle.
But knowing the right strategy and item build in DotA or LoL means fuck all if you can’t mechanically execute your hero properly, which - in my opinion - disqualifies them as “puzzle games”.
I hope you’re enjoying it, that first blind playthrough is quite magical. First half of DS1 is just a masterclass in level design. No other game has made me so excited to find a shortcut.