Wormerine

I check RPS. Being PC centric they tend to not cover extensively things I don't care about. There a bit more useless trash posts these days, then I remember, but still pretty responsible reports with mixed attempts at humor.

It did finish the overarching story of Bhaalspawn so yes.

Unexpected late DLC to fabaolous Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun coming in December 2021. It seems that no changes has been made to the roster, which is a shame... I expected for at least one new character. I just hope there will be no story retcon, though timeline of the events is unclear.

Unlike Diablo re-release, Diablo2 Re-something is a Blizzard sanctioned pricey remake akin to Starcraft Remastered, Warcraft3 Reforged - I cought the beta completely by accident when I had an urge to play a bit of Starcraft2 out of nowhere. I am pretty sure Diablo2 will be available through battlenet only, just like the other remakes. The asking price is..... £35 . Released planned for September. I mean it's a lovely restoration, but hardly the first one, and I would expect the price to be closer to £15 mark. I also don't trust Blizz to not try something fishy with it.

From what is said, it is unlikely to be XCOM-like when it comes to structure. RPG has been thrown around, so I expect bigger focus on linear progression. Chatting to "party members" in the base and building relations was also mentioned. And there is aformention main character, more similar to traditional RPGs then strategy/tactics hybrids. We will see what it will be in the end.

That would mean XCOM3 wouldn’t be Jake’s baby. Which is not impossible, if Civ can switch directors between installements, why not XCOM. I doubt it though. In interview, Jake mentioned that higher ups contacted him, precisely because they liked XCOM and wanted something like that but with Marvel. I assume XCOM team is working on Midnight Suns. It was observed already that FiraXCOMs were pretty much superhero games. Jumping from Enemy Within and XCOM2 to superheroes isn’t really a change in tone. I doubt they will kill off Ironman though - temporary decommission like in Chimera is more likely.

1) setting. Means nothing to me, but might mean something to marvel fans 2) selection of heroes - from movie A listers like Ironman, Caps, Dr. strange, B listers, like Ghost Rider and some I am not familiar with 3) we create our customisable Avatar - I think the “hero” who is resurrected. From interviews it’s supposed to have a bigger RPG focus with a camp and conversations with heroes we recruit. FIraxis’ Marvel Game sounds good on paper, but I am doubtful it will actually be good. Looking advertising around Chimera Squad it seems that Firaxis deems XCOM2 too complicated to new comers. I shudder to think what they will do with an IP aimed at a mass market. There is of course chance they will make good game first, and then let IP do the selling, but I am doubtful.

We can talk about it more once you beat it. Yes there are “foreshadowings” and “setups” but majority of SoD has nothing to do with either BG1&BG2. It’s not a story that leads into BG2, and there is especially clumsy bit at the end when the game has to transition from its story arc, into you being caught by Irenicus. If there were issues to be solved with how BG1 transitions into 2 I don’t think they succeeded.

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/diablo-2-resurrected-beta-is-free-to-play-for-all-this-weekend

Things on my menu: Dark Souls3 as posted before - loving it. I got to the point where game started to push back - the first half was rather smooth after DS1&2, but I died quite a bit in recent sessions. Last two bosses (Pontiff Sulyvahn and Boreal Dancer) did take quite a few tries. Horizon: Zero Dawn - it took a while, but I warmed up to this one. I mean it is still an unremarkable, pretty time waster but probably a better one from AssCreed likes. Combat grew enjoyable once more advanced enemies started to appear and I got more interesting tools, but I wish there was more to it - better movement mechanics, more involved quests or story. It's very much like Witcher3, except it's mostly filler content, not even one quests as interesting as a minor W3 adventure. At this point I am ready for it to end. Wasteland3 - it's ok. I enjoy my time with it but I don't particularly long to jump back in. That said, I aparently sunk 17 hours into it, I could awear it was max 5. So it is a good thing I suppose? I will beat it 100%, but I am more the happy to delay my playthrough while waiting for DLC2 to drop in October. EDIT: Oh I also gave a brief go to Diablo2 remaster during the free weekend on GOG. Superb job. I would kill for BG1&2 to be remastered like that. Looks fantastic and plays just as D2. I also tried playing with pad for a while, which worked very well (I always though hack&slash would make more sense with a pad - I never liked the clicking). That said it's Diablo so I had enough after an hour or two. Not gonna be coming back for more.

I beat it on my tablet in the couple months when I was PC-less. I thought it was ok, nothing that offended me as a Baldur's Gate fan, but not something I would add to my full BG1&2 playthrough. Frankly, I think I liked it more then Throne of Bhaal, which I feel about similarly as I do about Return of the Jedi - it's pretty disposable, outside finalazing otherwise great saga. Where I had most issues with SoD, is that IMO it failed it doing what it was supposed to do - bridge BG1 and BG2. It's not something I ever felt the games needed in the first place. Minor things (like Imoen studying magic) are cute, but not something I ever needed, and the actual transition into BG2 I found to be rushed and awkward. The only thing that I liked is seeing Jaheira and Khalid interact. With companions being rather basic in BG1 it's nice to see those two chat, before... you know. I also thought Beamdog was very heavy handed with pushing players through the narrative. BGs were great in delivering tied, directed narrative without constricting player too much. SoD felt like DM sitting me down and saying what's the story, my character motivations and objectives. Not terribly engaging, nor sparking imagination.

Finally some Elden Ring details. Indeed seems like it’s an evolution of Dark Souls rather then a drastically different IP. EDIT: No actual gameplay yet - just report by people who have seen it.

I don’t remember when CGI trailer sparkled my interest the last time. Also I don’t think those two were particularly good. X-Cmen was particularly awful.

That wakes up some early Comodore64 memories from when I was low single digits old.

A pretty decent stelthemup with abrupt ending Styx: Shards of Darkness. Steam Key. PM me preferably, as I don't dive into this thread often.

@BruceVChaha I don’t know about it. What I found is that at least in 90s & 00s consoles weren’t common sights, and personal computers and pirated copies of games were a norm. The result seems to be a generation who grew up on PC classics (often even older ones if you dad bought a dated PC) rather then consoles like PS2 or Nintendo. Genuinely the only Nintendo game I have seen before I moved to US to study was the original Mario on our Comodore64.

Ha! DS is a cycle of "thats bull****!" and "eh, that wasn't so bad". I still can't parry though. I really really would like some visual feedback parrying timing. I never know if I am too early, or too late, or it the attack is not parryable.

I am polish, have been working in Northern Ireland for three years now. I also cook my own food, and live rather solitary livestyle, so I am afraid my knowledge of Irish food (and all other Irish things) ends on Guinness.

Aside from me disliking the "spirit" of the game, so to speak, Shadow of Mordor was pretty great. I asume you are talking about Shadow of War - I have it on steam for quite some time, got it for free. I am meaning to give it a go one of these days, but lootbox extravaganza somewhat put me off the title, through from what I understand they removed it a while back. Meanwhile: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Small, non-violent RPG I believe. Hints and Josh-posts have been posted here before. It's supposed to have less then a dozen people working on it. Josh well deserved to do a passion project, so I hope this is it. Luckily Psychonauts2 seems to be living up to expectations. Hopefully it will move from "the best game no one bought" to "the best game no one bought, but that everyone played on Game Pass"

[Ups]

Well, you can hack a zombie to make it deader then it already is. Liches has their phylacteries to not have that happen, no? Undead are dead who still live, no? I mean it doesn't really make sense, but that's undead we are talking about.

Point&Click is one of those genres I don't see much reason to return to. In short - IMO the appeal of them was characters and story. Like RPGs they were far beyond found anything in other genres, and unlike RPGs they looked great (for their time). I like a good puzzle, but good puzzles are far and few inbetween in those titles. So while I enjoyed quite a few point&clicks, I would rather play Psychonauts then, lets say Monkey Ireland Island. Never got into Telltale's stuff.

PC, Prepare to Die edition. It wasn't too bad at this point. Playable, but suboptimal port. On my old laptop I was almost able to run everything without issues. There was one boss that tanked my framerate to sub 30FPS, but luckily he wasn't very tough. I have no clue if it was my PC or port.

Ah yeah, DS1 and it's ****ty port. I am glad you managed to get it fixed.