Wormerine

I did finish my first (and most likely last) playthrough just recently. I didn't much care for the game. I really dislike upgrade system. I don't care for soundtrack. I did play on PC, but it felt very slow and repetitive. I think it didn't help that I played it right after Titanfall2, which has a superb movement system. Doomguy, by comparison, felt like a fridge. I am not sure if I will touch the Eternal, though from what I heard I might like it more. Cranking the difficulty up might be what the game need. While Doom2016 has plenty of weapons, I felt I was switching them more out of boredom, then necessity.

I meant it mostly graphics wise. I don’t know if it game itself, or issues arising with porting from PS to PC. Assets look fabulous, but there is more jank then I expected. Menus look and control dated. Cutscenes are weirdly poor considering how well game looks otherwise... facial animations are inexistent, and there seem to be a weird physics reset with every camera change. There is also something weird happening when characters blink. Again, I don’t know if it’s game itself, or me running it 100+ FPS. Overall, most of that stuff happens in cutscenes, so the game seems to be more AAA, since I finished introduction and started game proper. Also, I thought starting as young Alloy made a bad first impression - her move set isn’t nearly as fluid as adult alloy, and reminded me more of something like Plague Tale, then what I expected from shiny Sony exclusive. Not surprisingly, I enjoyed the game much more for the brief time that I used controller... but then combat is sucky, though maybe it won’t be as bad if I get new pad that doesn’t drift when I try aiming.

Finally sinking my teeth deep into Arcane's Prey. Superb Systemshock-like in many ways, but it feels like it should spend some more time in the oven. It feels unnecessarily rough around the edges, and unevenly developed in some departments (like enemies - mimics are superb, everything else I have seen so far is rather bland and dull). Level design so far is top notch. I also installed Horizon: Zero Dawn. I find it difficult to get into it. Combat feels weak, quests require frustrating amount of legwork, the world looks beautiful but it just doesn't feel great to me - packs of same robo-dinos around every corner. I really, really hate "RPG" elements - there is even no "sell all junk" button, when shopping. I hate how tedious it is to refill med bar. On a side note - how long should gamepad last? I bought my first controller (PS4 gamepad) 2+ years ago. I had drifting issues for a while now (stick giving imput when idle or not registering imput) which I was correcting using deadzone, but yesterday the left/right/up arrows just randomly stopped working. I suppose I was contemplating to upgrade to Dualsense, but I am frustrated by how quickly issues appeared. I did use the game pad for a decent amount of time, but I am kinda turned off by how quickly £50 tech started to malfunction.

I don't mind rewatching a decent movie couple times for company. I like to rewatch a great movie at least 2 or 3 times for myself - one viewing isn't enough to fully appreciate it. I enjoyed both PoEs more on a subsequent playthroughs - PoE1, because knowing where the story is going made all that was happening before it interesting, PoE2 because narratively it is an interesting mess that I like to dig into. I am tempted to go for my 4th run, now when I should be able to run the game somewhat decently, and try out some of the difficulty mods on offer. I am still have on of the megabosses to kill, though I have no clue if I will be willing to push through it.

Ouch. Hope you will get past it soon!

Because it’s a better, deeper game? Still, nothing fundamentally wrong with Outer Worlds, it just needs to be expanded.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/playstation-exclusive-uncharted-4-is-coming-to-pc Uncharted 4 is coming to PC. Which is nice, BUT WHERE IS BLOODBORN?!

I don't know. For the game to have a niche fanbase it needs to do something exceptional, and this one seems like a mess. Which doesn't surprise me. For me it was always promising too many conflicting things to not make me suspicious. And as far as Ubisoft open world games go, I still have couple left in my library, that I hear are pretty decent.

That's far more positive then what I gathered from reviews I read/viewed. The only two good things I got are: it's ambitious, artstyle is good. It will be a skip for me.

Ah! My personal Half-Life3

Sure, but that's unrealistic if you also want to be nice looking game, with cinematics and good VO (see: Baldur's Gate3 and the Mistery of Confused Identity), and if you make an adaptation of book series, with Clint-Eastwood-but-fantasy protagonist - seriously, first short story recreates opening of A Fistfull of Dollars/Yojimbo.

It could very much be an issue IMO. What made Witchers great was that Geralt is perfectly suited for an RPG with narrative choices, with a heavily defined protagonist - even back in books he is a neutral party with his own goals, having to deal with outside forces and "choosing the lesser evil" - a perfect RPG protagonist with set motivations and goals, and yet space to allow players to make choices. Trying to do the same but with Ciri or a new character could not work so well. I am not terribly worried though - CDPR "got" Witcher world well, and at this point I doubt they will majorily mess it up, even if W4 will be weaker then W3. Even Thronebreaker, from what I played, was more or less alright.

That's good to know. I remember that saying it pre-cyberpunk, but with how I hear news about "Witcher4" I started to worry they got desperate.

That’s all fair worries. How to continue series is CDPRs problem - they might find a right answer, they might not. I, in general, am against doing Witcher4 - where do you go from here? While good both Witcher1&2 had issues that could be resolved, things that could be improved upon. Witcher3 isn’t perfect (I for one think all systemic RPG systems could be ditched in favour of a better tuned action combat), but I don’t see an easy or clear way to improve. Do the same game once again, and people will start noticed faults of the design. There is a reason, I could never get too deep into 2nd playthrough. Do radical changes, and unless they strike another gold, you alienate fans and overall make game which will be unfavourably compared to Witcher3 (even if it’s good by itself). But it CDPR. I didn’t believe in Witcher3 either due to it going openworld. Maybe we will get another great game, maybe it will by another Cyberpunk. But look at half-life - leave alone when it’s at its peak and the IP is remains priceless. Keep milking the IP without clear ideas on what to do with it, and you will run it into the ground.

Nay, just all I have been hearing was companies abandoning E3, and doing their own thing. Just check and Microsoft indeed does still plan to have a showcase. E3 or no E3 I am always up for news about avowed.

Does anyone plans to be on E3 at this point?

I played through the trilogy not so long ago, and personally, ME1 hold up the best to me. ME2 was definitely my favourite at the time of release, but I enjoyed it less and less with each playthrough.

Interesting, I always enjoy Daud's DLCs far more then base game - outside being a tighter and more "Thief-like", Daud as protagonist was for me a major improvement. Corvo just felt very artificial to me as a silent protagonist. I am curious what you will think of the sequel. I have currently Prey waiting on my disk. I want to complete Control, before I dive into it, though.

Time will tell, but not necessarily. So far all we hear claims, that Microsoft has no interest in messing with any of the studios it purchased. https://www.ign.com/articles/bethesda-will-run-semi-independently-under-microsoft As far as I can tell, Bethesda Softworks still exists it is just Microsoft subsidiary, instead of ZeniMax Media. Or rather if I read it right: ZeniMax Media is now Microsoft subsidiary, which further makes Bethesda Softworks Mic’s sub-subsidiary. On a side note, I am not sure what is worse: Ep. 1-3 or 7-9. Anyhow, there are still only 2 good Star Wars movies (ep. 4&5) and two passable ones (ep. 6 and Rogue One), and one pretty entertaining show. So far Disney isn’t terribly behind. My takeaway isn’t “Disney is worse then Lucas” but “don’t continue milking a cow, after it runs dry”. oh, coming back to the thread - high on Titanfall2 excellence I played through Fallen Order - which is a pretty fun StarWars romp. Easily the best SW game since KOTOR. Not quite as good story wise as those, and not genuinely great action game as Outcast/Academy, but it’s quite alright! See, EA, all you need to do is to release average games with lovable IP and everyone is happy.

It depends if we talk about Bethesda Game Studios (developer) or Bethesda Softworks (publisher).

Huh. If you backed Solasta, the 1.0-ish version is available for you to play (Steam only). You should get an email with information on how to access it. I am generally, against giving backers special treatment, but I have been eager to check it out for a while. Last time I played it was kickstarter demo. I have been happy with everything I have seen and heard about it so far.

I would argue more among the lines: what's the point of full VO if your don't commit? The benefit of doing VO of protagonist is that you can define him more as a character. Then again, it is possible that Larian is going to do just that for BG3 - from some of their early comments it can be understood that the game will have full VO, protagonist included. That means full VO for all origins. It still seems to me unlikely, and misguided, but it would fit what BG3 is doing so far.

Josh Sawyer defined crunch as "Excessive Overtime: 60+ hours per week for more then 8 weeks. As I understand discussion regarding crunch isn't: "game devs should have a right to a more comfortable right and not be taken advantage by employers", but "game devs are being worked to the point that is unproductive, bad for their health, and drives talented people away from the industry". Baby steps I suppose.

Ehh. I think it is just more of a jRPG then I expected. It has basic but perfectly functional combat system, with a nice customisation through program pods, but heavily undermined by actual leveling system which just messes up the balance of combat. I also had expectations - I knew it was Platinum game and that it was great and had "great combat system" and you need to play it multiple times to get true ending - so In my naive mind I imagined Bayonetta/DMC style game where replayability is further enhanced with story changes. Didn't do much more research then that, thanks to "you should go into it blind" comments. What I got was just a whole lot of running and repetition to get what was not so good of a story. And I am enough of a Ghost in the Shell junkie, for it to not make a big impression on me.

Yeah, controller is a must. Even so, I still don't see why the people love the game so much. Finished Fallen Order. Mediocare action/adventure, great Star Wars game. After having a blast with Titanfall2, after putting it off for years, I jumped into Doom 2016. Not terribly impressed so far. Combat is getting better as weapons and enemytypes count increase, but so far it's been rather dull. "Atmosphere" just isn't my cup of tea, I guess - I can tell, because I don't care for the soundtrack, which is aparently amazing.