Mamoulian War

Speaking of which, I want to play through the entire series on my PS4. I need to start with Zero, then Kiwami, which is a remake of the first Yakuza, before moving on to Kiwami 2 and the inevitable Kiwami 3 and 4, then Yakuza 5 and 6. IMHO ne of the best franchises currently on any gaming platform. Awesome sidequests, sarcastic and crazy humour, loads of minigames, and very good system for character growth. I was not big fan of this kind of games, but Yakuza 4 (my first game) completely changed my oppinion. Most western studios could learn from their design decisions.

Woo... End of summer will be really hot!!! http://www.siliconera.com/2018/03/17/yakuza-kiwami-2-headed-westward-august-28-2018-ps4/ Yakuza Kiwami 2 comming to the west!!!

Well as they should, they're in it to make money off the consumersOr, they could maybe make a product, that people really enjoy. Yes, you are right, what a silly suggestion... why would customers ever buy enjoyable and quality products?

No, they are to busy interviewing psychologist, how to implement the most addictive microtransactions without causing customer backlash.

A long-term study by Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Germany's University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf on violent video games and human behaviour. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/03/two-months-of-daily-gta-causes-no-significant-changes-in-behavior/

Well, unless it's Colonial Marines vertical slice to live type of change :D

It's not just Far Cry, this is a problem with open world games in general. The vast majority of open world games suffer from what I call Ubisoft Syndrome, that being a giant map littered with a ludicrous amount of icons, which are 90% repetitive busy work. Even the really good open world games suffer from Ubisoft Syndrome, they just manage to be fun despite this problem because they manage to do some things really well to drive the player forward and keep them invested while they continually do what amounts to tedious chores. I'll throw out a few examples of the better (IMHO) AAA open world games of the last half decade or so and what they did to overcome Ubisoft Syndrome. The Witcher 3 manages to dress up the busy work really well, making the tedious chores more palatable. Plus it has a compelling story and good characters to keep you invested. Watch_Dogs 2 has a legitimately likable protagonist and a cast of characters that you give a damn about. Also, the Bay Area is a great setting. Sleeping_Dogs has a terrific setting, in Hong Kong, and some cool characters, even if the game often doesn't spend nearly enough time on them. Mad Max makes traversing the map really fun, which is important, since you will spending the vast majority of the time doing just that. Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, like Mad Max, makes traversing the world really fun, and it drives you to find more sea shanties for the crew to sing. These games are good despite all being afflicted with Ubisoft Syndrome, but the problem is still there. The issue is that developers feel the need to provide hundreds upon hundreds of things for the player to do, to run up the playing time, because there is a perception that playing time = value. It's a lot easier to program half a dozen different activities and just copy paste them across the landscape than it is to make a bunch of unique content. Personally, I'd rather have a game with half as much content where the vast majority of it is unique and crafted from the ground up, but that's not the way of things these days. Yakuza series says Hello!!!

Poor SonicMage

Agreed, much better article than before. Though I am missing testing on a computer without SSD. Denuvo uses a lot of writing to disk, so this benchmark would be very interesting to see as well. Still hat off to the guy, who tried to implement as objective as possible circumstances for the testing.

As a Slav with partial Finno-ugric and Tartar origins I feel extremely underrepresented in the gaming industry! Not a single game ever created gave me the possibility to play that kind of character! Now excuse me, some internet outrage needs to be done...

Banner Saga will have 3rd game out in soon. Day 1 also on GoG. https://www.gog.com/news/coming_soon_banner_saga_3

Half-Life 3 confirmed!!!

spiritual successor != carbon copy

I am in same situation. Deluxe Edition, bit never played... From what I have seen, I will not play it anytime soon, because I do not like anything about that game. I am complete opposite to LadyCrimson on FFXV. I am so much disapoionted about the game, that it was my last Square Enix game purchased. I hate this Live Service bandwagon bull****, which is Square part off now. I will probably sell my game and wait until Final Fantasy Ultimate Royal Edition Omega Plus hits the bargain bin sometime in 2020...

With Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Yakuza 6 comming to the West soon, let’s see what Jim Sterling has to say about it and it’s OpenWorldedness.

Still playing Tales of the Abyss. I would say, I have not seen JRPG with so much text in last decade. I got more accustomed to the combat, but after 40+ hours of gameplay, I think I have spent more time in dialogue, than in combat :-P I have no issues with that in general, but sometimes I feel like I need to hit something :-P Still it does not hinder my enjoyment of the game, and hope Bamco will give us some new or remastered Tales game soon

Maybe we are playings two totally different types of rpg's but I'd have to disagree, respectfully. Rpg's back then had the same issues then as they do now, the event triggers and other mechanics existed and operated in the same manner then as they do now. There is just as many hand-holding rpg's now as there was then too though. I think the biggest change I have witnessed over the years is that games have only drastically improved in storytelling thanks to writers crafting more invested and relatable stories. I have to completely disagree on the last paragraph. The storytelling is worse than ever before, with very few notable exceptions, most of them Indies and Japanese games, which do not care about graphics fidelity. Bioware for example copies over and over same story, but with different protagonists. In the AAA west, storytelling is just third grade thing, that no publishers care about. The priority is now Monetization and Graphics, everything else is just unwanted sink of money for them...

Another view. More likely the same, but from different person, to people who are to busy to read a lot

I struggle with combat mechanics in any RPG, whenever I want to replay it after few months break again. In some games, I have to relearn the mechanics again, especially, when I am playing games with completely different mechanics in between.

Absolute Zero Translation just dropped all of their translations and removed all finished older translation projects... What a sad day to be a Tales of ... fan in this age

Public hearing in Hawaii concerning loot boxes with ESA lobbyist present. You can skip to 2:30, if you want skip stuff not directly connected to the loot boxes. I laughed hard when Chris Lee poked the guys with poker face "Pride and accomplishment" punch and have seen one of the guys interviewed failing to not laugh during that hearing :D

Finaly I can sleep well at night. The world will be sooner much safer place!!! Trump's crusade against violent games and movies has begun!!! https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/02/president-trump-we-have-to-do-something-about-violent-video-games-movies/

Yes, but the population of Britain was also almost completely replaced around 4500 years ago. More NeolithicPOC than MedievalPOC, one might say. (It's been a good couple of weeks for random research into British population genetics...) Some more info about it: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/prehistoric-europe-much-like-a-game-of-civilization-according-to-ancient-dna/

Well to be honest, this mod just underscores, how ridiculous the whole black people being in medieval central europe is. The chance that a african black person visited rural bohemia is the same as a chance that time travelling afroamerican visited there. Central Europe was always so homogenous, that even after 1000 years of Slovakia being under the rule of Hungary, the mtDNA of Slovak population is still after all that time about 44% Slavic. My granddad will be 88 years old, lives very close to town with population of 45000, he was trvelling whole life around Slovakia as a professional driver, but he never seen black person outside of TV... Hell, I am living in the mentioned town almost my whole life, and last time when I have seen black person walking in the town, was when I was 21 or 22. Now I am 40... From hearsay and talking in the pubs, there are approximately 3 black people living in the town currently. Hell even offsprings of native americans from south america have bigger population in my hometown, than black people today. IIRC, there are 6 of them living there.

Thankfully, the Nexusmods came to the rescue once again!!! https://www.nexusmods.com/kingdomcomedeliverance/mods/134