Fenixp

When I get time on my PC, I'm playing SW: Battlefront 2 campaign since it got added to Origin Access. It's a shame the campaign's nowhere near as good as that of Battlefield 1, which was shockingly well crafted and gave player a lot of agency, which is not something you can really see in games such as these. Sadly, Battlefront 2 campaign does none of that and just pushes you from objective to the next, shooting dudes, very much bringing it to line with your standard Modern Military Shooter campaign quality. Doesn't mean I'm not enjoying it, mind. The space shooter sections are rather nice and closely strafing above a Star Destroyer and shooting down TIE fighters just never gets old, especially when absolutely everything sounds and feels as right as it does in SW: Battlefront 2. Ground-based sections are fun enough as well and just as with Battlefield 1, they get optional stealth mixed in - sadly with quality of map design present in Battlefield 1's campaign nowhere to be seen. Still, it's big-budget Start Wars with a canon story and I don't mind being dragged along for a roller-coaster every now and again. Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2 proved that it could have been so much more so it's a shame that it's not, but it is what it is and I can't say I was really expecting more.

Normies are a bunch of phallic-shaped objects

I actually enjoyed online interactions with random people back when I was still playing online games in 00s. Still remember the dude who totally whooped my and my friend's arse in Dawn of War just to let us live, build back up a bit and lead a war on two fronts against his Necron hordes (we almost got him, but ... Then he got the revive thing for his Necron Lord before it was nerfed. Damn.) 'Spose it might be just me getting old, but cool interactions like that felt increasingly sparse when I was trying to play MP with randos, all the way to me ... Well, not doing that anymore.

And then there's lots of people who have real-life stuff they've got to attend to regularly, or just family members they'd like to be easy to reach for. And then there's lots of people who just don't have space or hardware to set VR up. And then there's... Y'know, my point is: There's a whole lot of reasons for a whole lot of people to avoid VR, while the advantage you get is a cool novelty at best.

Well, I'd say its downfall has been and always will be that it's a) Isolating b) Cubersome c) Difficult to set up ... And also motion sickness

Some of the later bosses in Hollow Knight are insane, especially the optional ones. 'Spose I should experiment with charms a bit more.

Yeah, Blow may be a bit pretentious, but he's undeniably clever and knows a whole lot about game design and learning. And that's basically all The Witness is about - learning and discovery. It wasn't quite enough to keep me engaged, but I have to admire how much far did Blow manage to take the concept of connecting dots and still make it entertaining and innovative. And the best thing about it is how you, as a player, tangibly improve at solving those puzzles while playing the game - to the point where you'll go back to puzzles you weren't able to solve previously and go "Aaaah, so if I combined what I learned over there and over there, that should ... Bingo!" It's like finally learning how to dodge properly and defeating that badass boss creature, but... Y'know, with puzzles.

When I recently tried replaying it, I found the turn-based mode too cubersome and the real-time mode lacking a pause button. But I do remember when I was playing it years ago I played real-time exclusively.

That sucks. Particularly because I picked up a "rare" gun thanks to one of those sidequests. Doesn't it make sense given the time period tho? If there's any setting where meaningful gun upgrades would make sense, it'd be 1800-1900

Don't worry, usually when something's universally praised I find it mediocre at best with some notable exceptions (TW3, Into the Breach) so I definitely won't be getting those till their price drops quite low. Completely unrelated of course and I'm not going to watch the video through as: a) It's called 'Not enough Zelda' and I didn't play a Zelda game in my life, so I couldn't care less about that angle b) It's nearly 2 hours long c) I've already made up my mind on not wanting the game that much But for the heck of it I started it and skipped to like 0:42:00 where he describes how you can break puzzles by applying simple solutions that the game doesn't prevent you from applying. Author then goes on about how this is due to Nintendo's lack of foresight, yet my reactions was pretty much "Ooooh, cool, so the objects in game react consistently to same actions, that's the base building block for quality emergent gameplay right there!", so this brief exposure was enough to nudge the game a bit further up my "want" list. ... It's still not particularly high.

Oooh yes, I didn't play DD on PC for a particularly long time, but I can definitely see myself putting a bunch of time into it on Switch. And I totally agree, by the way: I only own it for over a month or so, but the way it works is just totally transformative to the way I play games. PC gaming was the worst in the sense that sitting down to a computer also means "Work" to me, so I'd need to find at least 30 minutes to at least start playing something since the machine has to boot, a game has to load and before any of that happens, I tend to check my mail, take a peek at forums etc. Traditional console's better, but still not ideal, mainly because it takes up a TV and roots me to a single room. Switch just feels like so much more than mere sum of its parts - sure, the performance is underwhelming (still damn impressive for a handheld tho), but you want to really focus on that boss and play it on a big screen? Put the machine in a dock, it'll switch screens and resolution in a second. Me and my wife are stuck in a waiting lounge for half an hour? Let's play Rayman/Snipperclips/Whatever co-op, there's always two controllers attached to the machine. And then it's also just a damn good handheld console. I still didn't play the flagship games for the console like Zelda or Mario as they seem crazy expensive to me right now, but I'll get them eventually. And I gotta say the damn thing ruined aiming with my Xbox pad for me - the way it utilizes motion controls for fine-tuning aim is a work of genius and any controller with a gyroscope should do that from now on. And all without a gyroscope should get one just to do that.

Damn you, I just came here to make that joke.

Going thought Hollow Knight. The game's map is bloody genius - various ways of fast travel slowly opening up and unraveling, all areas have their own feel and ambience, and the whole game's extremely atmospheric - which may sound weird when said about a game as cutesy-looking as Hollow Knight, but it mostly feels extremely melancholic and makes me slightly depressed. And curious. Because there's just so much to find in Hollownest, and so much of it worth it. Oh and it gets bonus points for not trying to implement any kind of levelling or skill system, outside of Metroid-esque standards.

The tone? Yeah, absolutely, that's a good comparison. The pace? Nah, no way. Modern Warfare pushed you forward a whole lot more and the action itself was slower. While the pace is definitely faster than Half-Life games, it's still more akin to those than Modern Warfare and similar.

Tell that to Respawn who have said repeatedly Titanfall 2 campaign is inspired by Half-Life (especially 2 I'd say). And it's not difficult to see the inspirations - the campaign divided into chapters which all get unique mechanics to vary them up, heavily story-focused campaign with a more or less constant companion character (and this particular companion is a big-arse mech, so that's a plus) and a semi-linear level design with a lot of little exploration paths branching off the main one. The T2's campaign is even written far better than majority of other ... Well, games in general. True, the ambience is completely different - but I'd say HL games were always gameplay-first kind of things. Also known as "Graynuality" It's a decent game tho. And you get to pilot bullets in this one!

You've done well. Original War's clunky as hell, but you've never played a similar RTS.

I don't remember a whole lot of physics puzzle in HL1. Regardless, I think whatever Valve releases and calls 'half-life 3' these days will disappoint those still waiting for it, yet it won't attract all that many new players with the name alone. After all, it's been almost 15 years since the last big game in Half-Life series got released. At any rate, if you're craving more Half-Life-esque game design, give Titanfall 2 a shot. IIRC Titanfall 3's in the works right now, which is grand. Sadly, the original game did not have a campaign.

Opening loot boxes. In VR. Steam trading. In VR.

Ha! Won my first Into the Breach playthrough. Vek got their arses handed to them! ... Well, actually, it was pretty close and it was 'only' a 2 island victory, therefore the easiest possible one. Still, the game feels fantastic - it's one of those rare games where it's pretty hard for me to find anything to criticize. Everything's there for a reason, there's only as much visual clutter as necessary to make the theme work and I can't really find a whole lot of fat the game could be trimmed of (any, in fact) I think the only criticism I could have is that sometimes, it feels like the game puts my team in BS situations - then again, those BS situations are a big part of the challenge and are insanely satisfying when you do get to resolve them (not to mention they're often your own bloody fault) So... Deceptively simplistic yes insanely complex, it very much has the 'one more turn and I'm done' thing going for it and I can't get enough of it. So far the best game I've played in 2018 was the Hitman (2016), but I think Into the Breach just has to take its torch as my GOTY. A definite must-play for all fans of turn-based tactics games.

The only mod I am personally using for TW3 is this one - it makes the UI a lot less obtrusive while not taking away essential functionality. It's absolutely not essential and you can safely ignore it if you don't mind the game's UI. I couldn't stand its reliance of minimap and how unnecessarily huge the game's UI components were, so I only installed it for combat UI (health, potions, bombs, those kinds of things) to be only visiable during combat and so that minimap only displays when pressing a button, so 90% of the game is played with no UI at all. But I can't stress enough that the mod is far from essential - just good enough for me to mention, and it's quite easy to install and configure.

My amazing wife and family chipped in and got me a Switch. I got Into the Breach for Switch. I don't think I'll ever see my amazing wife or family again. Yeah, right? I'm not entirely sure how it got the great reviews it did - the second game's entirely devoid of ... Well, pacing and personality. Shooting and slicing's fun, other than that it's just... Meh.

"Trilogy pack"? There's no trilogy - there's been Prey back in ... Prehistoric ages and in 2017, a game of the same name got released. Later, 2 DLCs came out, both very different from the base game. We're talking about the 2017 base game here (I believe?)

Just how many System Shocks do you have in your backlog?

Still Witchering. It's such a "Just one more thing and I'll stop playing" game. I think I finally understand why I'm glad all the crafting, loot etc. is in the game, in spite of being rather poorly executed - it all feeds into that feeling of progression and generally 'doing things'. Y'know "I'll just explore that over there, get the last couple of experience points to level up, which'll allow me to craft the new silver sword and when I'm done with that, I can go and turn in the quest nearby"

Y'know, not all players can run the Enterprise. Some just end up with the science/engineering vessels that get mentioned once throughout the show and then get unceremoniously blown up to further the plot.