Hawke64

https://www.gog.com/en/game/new_arc_line Not every steampunk game tries to be Arcanum, but it is THE Steampunk CRPG, so some developers seem to be trying. Granted, 9/10 times the UE5 tend to look and run poorly for me, thus, I am just watching the particular title.

Finished and strongly disliked The Talos Principle 2. It is the perfect example on how to spoil a decent puzzle game with splattering the "production values" onto everything. It also advertised the DLCs upon starting a new game. While the puzzles themselves are fine, the long runs between them, a lot of visual junk and voiced dialogues with a poorly-implemented skip function are infuriating. The lack of quick saving was irritating in the more complex puzzles and them unlocking only when I was looking at the end-game was unwelcome. So, I tried 2 of them, looked sadly at the fast travel system not working the one time I could actually use it (it activates only from the train and only for the puzzles in the other areas), and proceeded to the ending. Finished and liked Arcade Spirits 2: The New Challengers. Also started Laugh Track from the same developers (free to play with an optional donation DLC). Both are good visual novels. The former offers a lot of character customisation options, though some important parts are hardcoded (e.g. being young, non-disabled, and prone to "inspirational" speeches). Tried Vigilantes. Seems fine. Tried Insomnia: The Ark. Spent 10 minutes running in circles in the third area (appropriately called The Stop) trying to find how to progress. Then I was able to find the first door and walk 10m more, after which I reached a dark corridor with a broken bridge and a lot of invisible walls. The two issues are that the brightness is not possible to adjust in-game and the camera angle is very narrow and points downward (no target lock, as far as I can tell). While there might be an amazing branching sci-fi story with diverse and complex gameplay systems ahead, I like seeing things and not being able to do so does not encourage me to continue. Finished the demo for Tactical Breach Wizards and liked it. A quite jolly tactical game. Spent a few days on and off trying to get MIO to run and recognise the keyboard at the same time. Installed Linux Mint which solved the issue, but have not actually played it yet.

I have started The Talos Principle 2. It is an excellent example of how to mess up a perfectly fine puzzle game. Like, were the developers thinking "I want the player to stare only at the compass while they are trying to find the next puzzle room and jog there for several minutes". The puzzles are fine if easy. The TTP1 PC's rewrite is somewhat disappointing (to be fair, Larian do much worse).

I have a feeling that this is not the same game, but they do look very similar. --- Death Trash Bosses Other spoilers

I have finished the available content in Death Trash. The pace improved significantly in the Perished City area. It was a positive experience overall and I look forward to the full version.

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/skald-against-the-black-priory-cffcc0 SKALD: Against the Black Priory is free on EGS. It is a decent turn-based CRPG, even if the ending is disappointing.

Any specific genre (gameplay/setting) you would like to try? --- Death Trash. The story has picked up, though I have not found an alternative solution for the quest I did not want to do. The Tower and the Godhunters' Prison locations were significantly larger than any previous ones, with the latter, unfortunately, being extremely light on story progression per encounter (as in, I cleared 4 large floors for 1 quest McGuffin and 1 lore bit). On the other hand, the Tower had 1 puzzle and 3 (!) quests with multiple solutions and skill checks. In terms of balance, I have found a decent 2h sword, attached an upgrade to it, and maxed out the Melee Sharp and Stealth skills, so I have a decent chance to 1-shoot non-boss foes. However, if I do not do so, they have a very high chance to 1-shoot me. The regular ranged enemies have perfect aim and just strifing is not sufficient to avoid getting shot, though it is possible to get out of the attack distance (depends). The PC does not have auto-aim either for the melee or the ranged attacks. Nor do I have the ability to restore HP automatically between encounters, while the enemies seem to do so. Thus, any 1-on-1 or 1-on-closely standing group encounters usually end in my favour fairly easily. If anything does survive the first strike, it results in a fair bit of kiting and dodging. Enemies do not dodge, at least. Reloading is almost instantaneous and automatic upon dying, so redoing a battle 3-30 times is less annoying. There have been 3 bosses so far - 1 with arena gimmicks (you can clear the arena, save, and face only the boss for 75% of its HP bar; it restores health if you leave the arena; has 1 attack and summons trash mobs at 25% HP), 1 with 2 attacks (just hitting and AoE explosives), and 1 which did not fight back but had a boss HP bar, therefore counts. The enemy variety feels sufficient, though it is mostly humans with weapons, a few zombies (regular, explosive, charging), 2 types of robots, and 1 type of turret. Also wierd dogs. I think it is possible to attack any NPC at will which is nice. Same for the locations - desert (and with meat), ruins (and with meat), underground facilities (and with meat), 1 purple forest. The equipment feels good, as every new weapon helps greatly, though it has only been dropping from the regular foes rather than being found in chests or dropped from the bosses (I did get a fairly useless but fancy-looking mask). I have found 1 armour set during exploration and purchased the one I use. Lockpicking feels pointless, as the value of the items found usually does not even offset the lockpick spent, while the XP gain is negligible (10-20% of a bandit). Regarding the above-mentioned quest, it gives an ability which might (will test) be required to access the newer areas, namely, the Perished City. From a quick look at the news and discussions, there might be more story content there. --- Update. Tested, the quest is not required to proceed. The Perished City has a better distribution and variety of pretty much everything.

Banquet for Fools. The highlight items key does not highlight NPCs or all items, so I just trotted forth past the nameless crowd in the starting fort into the wilderness. After walking through several maps with combat only (the in-game map with directions was not quite helpful), I got stuck in an ambush and decided to look for another way east after several attempts. The another way was a cave with spiders and resulted in the same outcome. The game does not have an automatic journal, which I noticed after a few hours, so I recorded what I remembered in the free-text notes. The formation being hard-bound to LMB and the dodge to the cursor annoy me a fair bit. I also discovered a bunch of smaller bugs (e.g. being able to leave locked buildings) and decided to pause the playthrough for the time being. I suppose, not being wolf'd upon loading a save is an improvement over the developers previous title, Serpent in the Staglands. Death Trash. The game had sat in my library for a few years with the release date somewhere far away. The combat is quite satisfying (the stamina is used only for rolls and stealth, but not attacks), but it has been quite story-light so far. I've visited 2 non-combat locations and cut through many more combat-focused ones. The issue is that there is no free health recovery, so I've been running with 1-2 HP for the past few hours, as I might need the limited resources later. Still, the controls are comfortable (I do not dodge to the damn cursor), the combat overall is enjoyable enough, and loading is very quick. I hope the story picks up at some point soon. The game had sat in my library for a few years with the release date somewhere far away. The combat is quite satisfying (the stamina is used only for rolls and stealth, but not attacks), but it has been quite story-light so far. I've visited 2 non-combat locations and cut through many more combat-focused ones. The issue is that there is no free health recovery, so I've been running with 1-2 HP for the past few hours, as I might need the limited resources later. Still, the controls are comfortable (I do not dodge to the damn cursor) and the combat overall is enjoyable enough. I hope the story picks up at some point soon.

I suppose, Disco Elysium is worth trying, at least to see which parts of its design bled into the adjacent genres (damned be the side panels and RNG in dialogues). The art and visual style are gorgeous, but the writing, the setting, and the narrative could be described as "Meh". You cannot fail the investigation (there is a choice-based conclusion, but it is not related to your objective), the NPC interactions are as exciting as watching paint dry, and one of the last sequences was completely lost on me, let's say, due to the "cultural differences". But the game did manage to portray minors in alignment with my opinion of them, which games rarely do. Sorry We're Closed was free on EGS a few days ago as well. If you've managed to get it, the game absolutely rocks.

Banquet for Fools

Started Banquet for Fools. It is a CRPG, the setting is original, the controls are rebindable (the feature itself is pretty, but uncomfortable, though), the party is fully customisable (like in IWD or Solasta). The developers quickly fixed the few bugs I reported. The combat is closer to RTwP and the prologue uses a predetermined mid-/high-level character. I must admit, I quite like the ragdoll effects there. The game is in EA and the full release is planned for the end of January. The New Arc Line (CRPG, steampunk; the demo ran extremely poorly) team recently posted that they use UE5 (a rather bad idea for a CRPG), so Banquet is my choice for this sale.

I appreciate the thoughtful response. However, separating art from the artist works when the artist no longer benefits from the royalties*. Rowling still does and is actively using her fortune to cause harm, regardless of how popular the IP is. When it is 6 feet underground and the fund set up specifically to finance transphobic lawsuits is dismantled, then sure. *excluding the financial aspect/from the cultural point of view, I'd say if you can experience the work in isolation from the author's biography and understand it fully.

The People Make Games channel has published Why We're Boycotting Xbox (and Maybe You Should Too). MS does own several developers whose work I am fond of, such as Obsidian, inXile, and Arkane, and, fortunately, all of them have been increasing the system requirements of their recent releases ("more graphics"), making boycotting them much easier. Some of the Arkane Lyon employees spoke out in support of boycotting their games, which takes quite a lot of courage even in France.

Just in case, JK Rowling's favourite hobby is harassing children and donating to hate groups, thus avoiding supporting the Harry Potter franchise would be appreciated. https://www.them.us/story/jk-rowling-girlguiding-girl-guides-girl-scouts-trans-ban-consent Granted, the books were not the best examples of literature to begin with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1iaJWSwUZs

In case it might help, GOG offline installers unpack everything through the system drive, so you'd need ~140GB of free space there for it to work, regardless of the selected installation drive. This is one of the main reasons why I avoid GOG for larger games. Why the developers stopped giving a f* about optimisation is another question.

The winter giveaways seem to have started on EGS. Today's is Eternights. The sales on Steam and GOG are ongoing and I am trying to figure out how to get GOG games to run on Steam Deck. I suspect it might need more storage space or I could just repurchase on Steam.

I am unsure whether humans or AI are worse for the environment, but not increasing the number of humans globally seems like a good step when they can and want to move on their own. Immigration can solve workforce shortages, providing services and taxes (unlike large corporations), and likely moving out before retirement, though the people who immigrate must be protected from exploitation, as they have less safety nets than the local citizens. In the UK, the nursing and the agricultural jobs (which the locals do not have the skills and the inclination for) offer(ed) dedicated immigration pathways. For the non-physical jobs, genAI might work, but, as was said during the peak of the COVID pandemic, a lot (not all) of the "essential" jobs require a human or a humanoid robot, unless there is a significant investment in the infrastructure. As the latter are more expensive to make and maintain than to hire a human, humans are more likely to be used. One of the explanations I've heard for why people care more about the genAI being applied to art is that artists can articulate their concerns about their employment and income, unlike a random factory worker. Well, and that creative jobs are more fulfilling than the manual labour or more routine office jobs, forgetting that artists also have to draw icons for mobile games, ads for fast food chains, or covers for romance novels, which are more of a craft than a genuine artistic endeavour. Humans love self-expression and even if it becomes unavailable as a source of income, they will do it for the sake of it, though it would make the hobby less inclusive. --- Regarding Larian specifically, all their initial concept art is generic (Rivellon is a generic fantasy setting), aside from maybe the elves and the lizards. Utilising genAI will not change it. The attached screenshot is from the DOS2 intro - the faces are deformed and the clothing already blends in. The current game cover, with the companions in action poses, is much better, but it is 1 promotional image.

The NG+ mode is quite fun, though much easier, as the stats are higher and everything dies quicker even on the highest difficulty setting (but also kills you in 1-2 hits). I used the whip sword as well due to its range.

I admire your optimism, though cannot share it. As they say, "garbage in, garbage out" - the genAI models are trained by humans on the human-generated data with the human-set goals, thus, the result is likely to be more of the same. And then there is the issue with the energy consumption. Pretty much yes.

Atlas Fallen I was quite surprised that the sysstem was locked by the NG cycle, but then I was almost always at 2-3 stage of Momentum (higher damage received and inflicted, also the dagger transforms into a greatsword), so it kind of makes sense. There was a way around the guard which I missed on the first playthrough.

I think Expeditions: Viking managed to achieve it - the time limit was generous but present and made sense for the story. I suppose, the same could be said about the tutorial in Tyranny, but the scale there was smaller. For Larian's D&D game, if I am not mistaken, the party discovered that the illithid transformation is delayed quite early and from there it was trying to find a cure at a more leisurely pace. Then again, even if it continued to be urgent, every other NPC was promising solutions at the start, so going along with them could be in-character. Well, also looking for a high-level cleric, a pickaxe, and the True Resurrection spell, which would be travelling straight to the nearest large city.

I have finished Atlas Fallen on the highest difficulty in NG+. The interesting part is that the tools available (the weapon upgrades, new armour sets, and the more powerful Essence Stones) effectively offset it - while the bosses could 1-shoot me, I also was almost instantly and constantly at high Momentum (which additionally meant higher damage to me) and able to use the Shatter attacks with a lot of i-frames repeatedly. The longer battles were somewhat challenging, especially as the screen was getting more "noise" (from the weapon particles to the number of opponents), but, overall, it was easier than the first playthrough. The only issue is one of the randomly appearing battles with various modifiers. The foes to be faced vary, but the reward progression is static and carries over between the NG cycles. The thing there is that it is not hard to get hit once and the battle despawns after that. I assume, if I reloaded, the same battle would have been accessible at the same spot, but I have not tried. The regular random battles have an auto-save nearby and the main story ones can be restarted from the start of the encounter which is incredibly convenient. I am satisfied with the experience and might try replaying it in a few years. On a random note, the NG+ armour sets look much better than the NG ones. They are more detailed and more fitting.

The winter holidays are approaching and I still have some keys from HumbleBundle: The keys that will expire in June (?) 2026: Batman Arkham Origins LEGO Ninjago Movie Video Game Pillars of Eternity - Definitive Edition Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire - Obsidian Edition

Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand If I haven't mentioned it, there is a built-in photo mode and I was playing on quite low settings. The screenshots are spoiler-free. Alas, I could not "donate" 5 inches of steel in its eye socket. The priest had an "accident" shortly after. The most annoying boss battle in the game, as the boss was flying around the arena, getting stunned almost always out of reach, somehow preventing me from gaining Momentum (used for abilities). Thus, it was 10 minutes of slowly chipping away its health bar. Somehow, I did not have this issue with the other flying enemies and was able to stay close.

I have finished Atlas Fallen: The Reign of Sand and liked it. Aside from the loot, 1 very annoying enemy type, and the inability to tear human NPCs apart, the game is excellent. Review: