If Warren Spector is actually involved I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt but I’m not thrilled about the competitive multiplayer aspect and the trailer presentation made me think “hero shooter” more than Deus Ex/Thief spiritual successor. Also Spector’s track record over the 20 post-Eidos years isn’t exactly glowing.

Ragebound sounds about right. I had Ninja Gaiden on my original Xbox back in the day and while I loved it and played the shit out of it I never beat it. These games were fucking hard.

I’m starting to really despise this franchise, studio and/or publisher. Fuck off with these remaster cash crabs two years after a game is released. Are we due a The Last of Us: Part 1 Remastered - Remake too soon? Get out of here.

Didn’t the remake rip out all the amazing period songs from the original OST? I remember vibing to Django Reinhardt as you’re driving was a huge part of it for me.

I was praying for Letho even though we all knew it was going to be Ciri (for better or worse, we’ll see).

Leaning into the moral grey of the Witcher world with Letho would have been awesome, he says (in one of the endings to his story) he’ll head out east over the mountains so we could have gotten some all-new environments and it would have been 100% CDPR IP so they could have done whatever they wanted without trampling over lore too much. Plus Letho is just an amazing character with huge protagonist energy. Oh well.

FFXIV: A Realm Reborn is a fantastic trailer but it’s almost cheating because Answers is such an unbelievable Uematsu banger that it carries it on music alone.

Assassin’s Creed: Unity had one of the best trailers of all time, and it will take something truly special to dethrone it from my personal nr 1.

Too much going on. It’s like they’ve just accepted and (mostly) implemented every single feature request they ever got without necessarily thinking about how it should work with all the other stuff.

I played PoE for a good few years around its release and had a lot of fun initially with the temporary hardcore leagues with new mechanics every time, but there is a good reason I haven’t come back to the game - and it’s not just that I’m kind of over the ARPG thing. Scope Creep has turned it into a convoluted mess to get back into if you’re been out of the game for a while (or never played it) and I say that as someone who typically enjoys complexity.

The SoD expansion was made by Beamdog some 15 years after BG1 was released. It’s admirable that they tried getting the original voice actors back, but otherwise the team behind BG 1&2 (and ToB) had nothing to do with it. I couldn’t get through it, and I have a hard time supporting the Enhanced Editions as is due to Beamdog inserting their fanfiction into them as well - though I recognise they’ve been instrumental in revamping the engine and bringing the games to a new generation of people.

It even ruined lots of let’s plays and streams of the game if you ever decide to watch any. It’s wild how intrusive they are.

Not to mention the fucking notifications for Epic Games Achievements are loud as all fuck and default to “on” every time you open the launcher so you have to manually turn on Do Not Disturb every time you launch the game or your immersion gets ruined every 5 seconds by an Epic Achievement notification ding (and visual on screen popup btw!)

Epic is just terrible. I wanted to bypass the launcher by using Heroic instead, but it wouldn’t recognize me having the Deluxe edition without actually installing the game through Epic and being logged in through their launcher. Garbage.

And that’s very deliberate! There are a couple of key rolls very very early that have positive outcomes if you fail them. They’re supposed to teach the player that failure is okay. But it turns out many many people are too afraid of the dangerously red button and the low percentage number so they never even try in the first place, thus also missing the lesson.

Also that sequence you’re talking about is one of my favourites in the game, it’s so damn funny. Another classic failure is the ice-cop-hat-fuck-show.

It really is the best book I’ve ever played.

I actually think an argument could be made for Disco Elysium not being one of these games actually. I’ve seen people bounce off it because they went in with the wrong expectations. The game doesn’t really market itself correctly: it claims to be an isometric RPG and a detective game, but it could be argued the game is actually neither. Also lots of people miss out on a lot because they weren’t aware of the fail-forward design principle.

Dividing my time between playing STALKER 2 and modding it. There is a really great game underneath the surface - at least the potential of one - but it’s a shame it released in the state it did. The A-life offline simulation being turned off smells of console constraints and/or a forced release after they ran out of possibilities to delay further. I really hope they’ll be able to keep working on the game through patches because it has the potential to be truly fantastic.

Also still playing Deadlock, a game or two a day or so. It’s an often frustrating experience - as MOBAs tend to be - where matchmaking still has a huge impact on your fun, but the core gameplay is just so damn good. I just wish I was in a skill bracket where people are actually using mics and coordinating and communicating. Partly an EU problem though I’m sure.

A heathen I might be, but I still prefer BG2 over BG3. And Jon Irenicus might just be one of the best video game villains of all time.

No, but I would have if I had fewer hours played just to get a proper experience from the start and consequently less of an item stockpile etc. Grok’s less loot in stashes won’t apply retroactively for example.

They’re definitely not pushing the engine to its limits and it’s a shame. No Ray Reconstruction for example and no hardware ray tracing. I was wondering why shadows and reflections lacked clarity at first. This is apparently why.

It’s a weird one though because despite all the flaws I can’t stop playing the game. Maybe I just love STALKER that much. I also have a bunch of mods installed, granted.

I recommend going through what’s trending on Nexus and seeing what appeals to you. Apart from fixing the timescale I installed some rebalancing mods that make enemies less bullet spongy and combat more lethal, as well as a mod attempting to improve A-life and stealth. Also installed all of Grok’s mods. and this Medkit and Consumable rebalance.

As long as they’re not lying about the existence of A-life in the first place I’m hopeful. If the framework of it actually is there but not working I have hope they’ll fix it.

Otherwise yes, I’m still enjoying having more STALKER after all these years. I’ve installed maybe a dozen mods and am now having a lot of fun with the game, but even so there are a lot of things missing and/or lacking. Even stuff like factions. You can’t see the faction of corpses anymore when you loot them, and you can’t keep track of your relations in your PDA. Aren’t factions supposed to be important? Puzzling.