Wormerine

Finished Jedi Survivor. Yes, the port is still pretty horrific, and would advise waiting for deep, deep discount just on account of that, but even ignoring that I wasn't too impressed with the title. For context - in spite of it's faults, I really liked Fallen Order. I think youtuber, Monty Zander got it right calling it Lipstick on a Pig, but what a good lipstick it was. The sequel is very much the same - but more and bigger. And while Lipstick isn't much worse, I also feel there isn't more of it this time around, to cover the pig that's grew to be much, much bigger. That, as well there law of diminishing returns, made it much harder to look past game's poor aspects. So allegories aside: combat is still pretty ****. There are more stances, but I didn't feel they contributed much to gameplay. Platforming is still very stilted and scripted. I also found enviroment very difficult to read, and found myself relying on map a lot - those have been rather detrimental as most of the open world content revolves around collecting things. Having to rely on map to see where you can go, and later on where collectibles are (really some of them blend so much with the enviroment, even knowing something is there, I struggled to locate it) just doesn't make for an engaging game loop. The game in general felt more unfinished and janky than FO. Fortunately, story is still alright. Character writing and interactions are a highlight but while story/plot eventually get good it takes a long time and a lot of padding to get there. I also felt the game came near finding an interesting second arc for Cal, but I don't think it quite gets there. Too much time gets wasted on chasing McGuffins and one dimentional antagonists, to make enough space for actually good times. Action setpieces also felt more vapid this time around.

One of those games I watched video about, sits in my library for what must be years, but is yet to be launched.

Granted they recicle so much from installement to installement, that minigames being more elaborate than is a norm is not that surprising. Playing through Ishin right now. It definitely feels like a remake of an older title. Don't have an opinion on it yet - I didn't like it so far, as much as I thought I would. I liked Like a Dragon, but I am not sure how excited I am for another jRPG entry - LaD became a slog after a while, and I am not terribly excited to repeat that.

oh yeah. In spite of never backing a game, I think I got some Golden Ticket as well due to creating account early, or something like that. Honestly I have lost interest once they pivoted from “single player combat sim” to “persistent universe so what you want”. That’s a pipe dream I never see myself enjoying, even if somehow it won’t be a complete mess. It is everything. FPS and on foot exploration was one of the earliest bloat features once crowdfunding turned widely successful.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/space-sim-squadron-42-is-feature-complete-and-gunning-for-starfields-lunch-with-massive-new-video Honestly, good single player campaign is all I cared for when Space Citizen was crowdfunded (it's hard to belive I was still in University at that time ). From the footage shown the game will need A LOT of polish before it is being released, though.

It seems to be he wants to design dual system, like what Deadfire ended up trying to be. I think he is right on the money - RTwP adds additional challenges on top of number crunching tactical game. Some players handle it very well, quite a few don't. And when doing turn-based playthrough I did thing that the game made a lot of enemy designs more understandable, and there was a more noticable distinction between quality and filler encounters. Way back I did suggest that PoE3 could really dial in difficulty and design for Turn-based combat - and those who need it (like myself) could use the clarity of turn-based combat, while players capable of analyzing combat as it happens in real time could go RTwP. You could dial in tactical difficulty of the game without making it inaccesable. And if one wants to make encounters quck and unchallenging RTwP + low difficulty setting should do a trick. But let's not get our hopes up. I am happy to see that when asked "what would you do with unlimited budget" JS answer is "PoE3". At the same time, he might not be willing to do it with anything less, so I will still treat PoE as an abandoned IP unless proven otherwise.

Is it shorter? If my memory serves me well both games were in around 80h marks.

Josh Sawyer would be up for making Pillars of Eternity3 if he got a lot of budget fot it. So... still no hope for PoE3? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/obsidians-josh-sawyer-wants-to-do-pillars-of-eternity-3-with-baldurs-gate-3s-budget

Who would make it, though? Would Arcanum IP made Tim Cain be willing to come back from semi-retirement? I also worry, if Arcanum 2 could even be as ambitious as the original was. Arc1 was probably too ambitious, but I am not sure anyone would be willing to invest into what made Arcanum special.

There are some class unique instances, but for the most part at best it makes a generic skill check a bit easier than ususal. I didn't find the game made me "feel" like my character is of certain class in the way, lets say, Deadfire did.

It was the first and only CoD I played. Respawing enemies really killed it for me. I remember trying to be tactical in one of ther missions, and I kept killing enemies for 15 minutes, before I realised the game will spawn enemies infinitely until I move forward. Very much smoke and mirrors throughout. I on the other hand jumped back into Titanfall2, as its multiplayer has been resurrected. Campaign is really solid for what it is. Multiplayer is so very good. And I usually don't like those type of games.

Than I would encourage you to give dedicated Stealth game a chance at some point. In games that wear multiple hats, stealth tends to be rather uninteresting. My suggestion would be (in that order) Thief2, Splnter Cell: Chaos Theory, Mark of the Ninja, Thief1 (though from all mentioned Thief1 is my fav, but it's a fanscinating mess mixing stealth missions with something closer to first person Tomb Raider).

Finished Lies of P. It's alright. Really impressive considering how new the studio is. I quite enjoyed it at first, though it overstayed it's welcome for me. Gameplay wise it felt like a mix of Dark Souls and Sekiro to me (I know Bloodborne is a commonly used reference, but I am still waiting for the PC port). Mostly Dark Souls, expept it relies heavily on perfect parries a lot - something I wasn't a fan of, as P felt quite sluggish to control, and enemies relied heavily on the annying long windup+immediate strike attacks, that are rather impossible to read, and require precise memorization. If there is another way one can play I didn't find it - at least as motivity builds (aka strength) bosses rarely have enough time for a safe strike. So it's been parry, parry, parry, until they stagger, and that try to squeeze heavy attack for a critical. As as far as I can tell that's a strategy for every difficult enemy in the game became rather boring. I ended up using Spectre's help (summonable NPC helper for most bosses) for couple of last bosses as I just couldn't be asked to repeat the dance. Spectre turn out stronger than I expected - both good at tanking, and dishing out damage, usually turning ball busting bosses into pushovers. Alas, I had to suffer through the last boss without an assistance.

Well, games they said they won't add to gamepass (so CoD, Diablo4). I am pretty sure it's open season for all the other stuff. I absolutely expect that bunch of the stuff will get dropped, like it did with Bethesda.

While Eidos Montreal Deus Ex's reboot/prequels are quite decent, I meant the OG 2000 Deus Ex. You know you, but what stealth games did you try? Honestly, I think most stealth games aren't just done very well. I really like stealth, but there is a handful of games I would actually recommend (Thief1&2, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Invisible Inc. Mark of the Ninja, Mimimi's output. Also hitmans but I don't think stealth as a game mechanic is their strong suit).

@BruceVC Have you tried Looking Glass Studios output? I retroplayed their immersive sim titles (Thief1&2, Systemshock2 [1st one still being on my to do list]. Deus Ex by some of the same developers). All phenomenal games, that hold up very well. My gaming doesn’t quite go as far back as @Gorth’s and while I have fond memories of Comodore64 from childhood, not much there that stuck with me throughout the years. Probably the oldest games I still return to are from DOS era: original Xcom (UFO: Enemy Unknown) modded using open-xcom, and original Sid Meier’s Pirates!.

I didn't play much (too distracted with other games for now) but I do like the setting. It aims for pulpy adventure vibe (Indiana Jones, Mummy, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Rocketman, and probably the whole host of media those films based themselves on), and so far so good. I also don't like the mesh of turn based and real time stealth - whenever it is Baldur's Gate3 or Mutant Zero real time controls just aren't tight enough to be enjoyable. THAT said, so far Lamplighters seemed like the best implementation of the idea of the three. Honestly, I enjoyed my time with the game a lot, but reviews cooled me off a bit. Will wrap up what I have now, before diving into LL for real.

Welcome to Mimimi goodness. If you like it, Desperados3 is pretty much the same, but more polished and robust (and with pause!). Shadow Gambit ain't bad either, though it's more freeform nature made it less appealing to me.

Cocoon. The dimention hopping puzzle game. It's alright. I mean it is very, very well designed, but I didn't find it that fun to play for the most part. Puzzles ramp up very gradually, and the game does an excellent job in introducing concepts. However, I didn't find this puzzle game actually required me to do much thinking, until last few puzzles. I was more often amazed how devs found clever way for me to do what they need me to do, and take with me balls they wanted me to have, but I had very few "aha!" moments.

As they moved on to microtransactions filled live services it only makes sense to bring their games to a platform with a wider audience.

Both Witcher3 and Cyberpunk were mostly narrative action games anyway. If judged as RPGs both games were horrendous. From what I have seen of the new skill tree it seems like a big improvement - the old one was rather dull and not meshing well with action gameplay. Old system had a lot of nodes, but most of them were filler anyway.

So, Elden Ring DLC early 2024?

I played X-Wing Alliance only. I really need to dish out some money on a flight stick. I am itching to replay Freespace’s - those were amazing Space Combat games.