Humanoid

Stalling on D:OS halfway through the first act when I first tried it playing "normally" - i.e. single-player with a full party - then coming back a year or two later in co-op Lone Wolf mode (one character each) and absolutely adoring it was the affirmation that my CRPG tastes had completely flipped. It was a slow process that probably started with DA1 but which now I fully embrace. Never played any variant of Pathfinder and don't plan to unless they add co-op or design a solo adventure.

Despite at that point already knowing that that style of game was no longer to my tastes, I did give PoE a good honest go. Not on launch, where I got bogged down before even getting to the big city, but a few years later where I managed to will myself to the point I unlocked the stronghold. However that slowed the game down even more and I just stopped playing not long afterwards. Now, I believe I did this at some point after PoE2 launched, but before it gained the turn-based mode, or at the latest while it was still in the experimental build. I did play PoE2 when it launched too, in two phases, one where I tried to play normally for the first starter island, then I threw my hands up, set it to story difficulty, and tackled some stuff in the big city. Turns out in story mode you still die quite a lot if you try to let the party AI resolve combat while wearing starting gear. So that too, was the end of that. I have no strong opinion on the writing in either game.

Spycraft and Alpha Protocol? Interstate '76 and Forza Horizon? Monster Truck Madness and Shamu's Deep Sea Adventure?

Ironically in the non-sanitised version there's no violence, just two men and the woman having peaceful relations.

Plus more time wasted on the boring, boring superhero genre.

I believe Microsoft's market valuation is an order of magnitude higher than Disney's, trillions vs hundreds of billions, so the reverse would be more likely in a world where such a move is allowed to go through.

That's a completely different issue in that I just avoid zombie games entirely really. There is one exception, ironically being party-based, in Death Road to Canada. But then I have no problem with multiple units outside of the context of RPGs, even if you can argue DRtC has strong RPG elements, after all I play a *lot* of XCOM (which has zombies too I guess, ha).

Yeah, games like Disco Elysium, Gamedec and Encased are why I have no inherent issue with isometric games. I'm very happy they exist, and long may that situation continue. However, this is a relatively recent trend and for most of the industry's history, isometric and party-based has gone hand in hand (ARPGs excluded). And further, how would you ever design a game like that around a party of four or six ? It seems something that is theoretically possible but which no studio would ever really bother with as it'll probably end up horribly compromised. Obviously I'm not saying that party-based RPGs shouldn't exist. I'm just explaining why I, personally, am done with them.

Not always, sometimes I have a surge of bloodlust. 😛Roleplaying means addressing the situation presented on its merits, and sometimes that means that violence is the most correct solution to the problem at hand. If I take a rigid approach at either extreme then it means I'd no longer be roleplaying. At any rate, I'm certainly not someone who obsesses about pacifist or ghost runs, or any other achievement-oriented measure like that. Now the problem with the majority of party-based games is that the devs design a ton of classes with a ton of abilities and give you a ton of gear that they want you to use, and all of that means the gameplay design ends up strongly skewed towards encouraging their use. Elements like stealth, on the other hand, fly out the window because there is no sensible way to design a large party sneaking around in concert. The result of it all is that while in theory it's possible to design a party-based games that can cater to my desired playstyle, it hasn't really happened yet and I can't see it happening. Meanwhile in lone-character RPGs, not only are you much more likely to get that kind of flexible, multi-faceted gameplay, those games already exist as a proven formula.

Nah, for me I don't want to take any at all and avoid the combat entirely. At worst I'll tolerate one temporary fully-autonomous companion like in New Vegas and whatnot but beyond that no, just leave me alone.

I don't mind whatever perspective an RPG is presented in, but please please please stop forcing me to babysit companions. The worst part of it is that the presence of NPC companions tends to indicate a combat heavy design to justify the existence of said companions and you're punished for not taking a full complement of some arbitrary number.

Holidays means family gaming time as I go back to my parents' house for a couple of weeks. During that that I played Unpacking with my sister, taking turns to unpack each room. It's a decent enough game, cute but perhaps not as zen as others may see it. However it has way too many books. That's not a joke complaint. A lot of the game is just robotically unpacking books out of boxes and putting them on a shelf. Makes it feel like filler, especially as the low-res pixel art means most of the books are nameless, title-less and look completely generic instead of telling a story about the protagonist which you'd think the intent would be. You might say that this kind of thing is the point of the game, but differences can be subtle: organising a bunch of colourful panties into an aesthetically pleasing grid arrangement in a drawer is far more engaging than placing nameless books in arbitrary order on a shelf. Other than that I've played a random grab bag of things on the Xbox Sex. A little bit of Sherlock Holmes Crime and Punishment, co-operatively. A little Overcooked in 3-player mode (which is unbalanced in some levels that have a 50:50 geometry split). A little FIFA with the 10 hour trial thing that comes with EA on Game Pass. And sampled a couple other Game Pass titles: a little of The Pedestrian, which isn't a terrible puzzler but has an irritating interface. And Rain on Your Parade, which was just boring. Katamari Damacy Reroll which might have potential but is kinda obnoxiously loud (both in a literal and figurative sense). Oh, and Moonglow Bay, which crashed shortly after the tutorial ended and didn't autosave, and which apparently does not allow you to skip the tutorial. Ugh. Anyway, back home now for the past week but haven't really been bothered to play anything but a couple of quick AoE2 games. I half feel like doing some trucking, but a recent patch kinda broke the default force feedback settings and I can't be bothered dialling it in manually.

I don't really split the second and third games, I quite like both and played them in similar ways. Yes, TW3 has all the extra padding, but I'm not at all compulsive about doing random side content and have no trouble ignoring it once I've had my fill. So for me the main difference between the two is the addition of the dodge button. It's a good addition in that rolling everywhere was kind of silly, but the downside of the addition is that I no longer find it playable on keyboard.

The only zombie game I tolerate is Death Road to Canada.

Yeah, controlling four party members would be far too much for me. Fortunately I only play the modern Larian RPGs in co-op which makes it manageable. Even moreso if the Lone Wolf perk from D:OS comes back, but we shall see about that.

A vowed, as the name implies, would only have one vow as opposed to many.

Give me a "happy" version of those Souls-likes and I may finally give one a try, they all just look so dreary and miserable. Just like Nintendo did for XCOM with Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, do a Mario Dark Souls.

Reviews already have review dates on them, so adding the game version as of the time the review was made is reasonable, with EA versions being tagged as such. Distinguishing between Early Access and full release isn't necessarily all that meaningful though - I mean, No Man's Sky wasn't Early Access. And we all know plenty of games release with issues present in EA/beta launching unchanged. So beyond marking the little info box in the corner, I wouldn't go any further - certainly nothing that automatically invalidates or otherwise deprioritises those reviews.

I dunno, when I bump my leg against something I might shake it side-to-side a little and that seems to repair it.

Darkest Dungeon Early Access was better than the finished product.

Yeah, probably healthier for me too not to be too cynical. It helps as well that despite their financial might, Microsoft are the smaller player in games than the likes of Valve and Sony, so it doesn't feel like I'm tipping the scales towards (to mix metaphors) where they're already leaning.

Spencer is so good at making positive sounds that my worry becomes that he's in danger of being promoted outside the gaming division. The good PR may be all smoke and mirrors of course, but it kinda does show how it's really not that hard to look like a good guy compared to the industry standard. ...and it also shows how easily I could find myself being swayed by smooth words. I have to admit I sometimes have difficulty reconciling my position regarding the danger of growing monopolies in this space against outcomes that so far have been largely positive for me as a consumer.

The Instant Result button is there for a reason.

I was just thinking to myself that it might be time to get a new edition of Football Manager Touch for six years, the last version I own being 2017. It's been a frustrating time for the past couple of years because Game Pass included the full-fat versions of 2020 and 2021 which is far too bloated for my tastes, and the overly stripped-down Xbox 2021 edition (that can be played on PC but has some critical limitations like a 30 season limit and no ability to import any external files). The middle-of-the-road Touch version (formerly Classic version) was always the happy medium for me since its introduction. Well, scratch that plan, because Touch has been discontinued. In name it exists for the Nintendo Switch only, but that's just because I presume Nintendo wouldn't like a game called "Football Manager Xbox Edition" on their eStore: it's stripped back just as badly, if not moreso. I wonder if this is the end of the road for me and the franchise because it means going forward they offer nothing that's in my wheelhouse. Which is doubly disappointing because I was hopeful of some major changes on the horizon when they announced that women's football would be added within the next few years, which felt like the first attempt at major innovation in years.

Hey, I asked Black Isle for a combatless RPG back when I registered in 2002. I'll take it.