mkreku

Alan Wake I know that a version of Alan Wake was released, but I choose to ignore that abomination that consists of little snippets and crumbs picked from their original, grand vision. Alan Wake was supposed to be a psychological thriller set in a fully open world with 100% dynamic lighting and weather effects. It was also supposed to be fully physics based, meaning that trees could fall over, rocks could be moved, buildings destroyed and so on. Check the trailer above, especially the super low quality footage at the end (the tech demo), and weep over what could have been and try to erase from memory what it actually became.

Been playing Dysmantle on my Steam Deck lately. It's basically a game where you bash everything and.. that's it. The world has ended and you've survived in a hole in the ground. You run out of food so you have to get out. Armed with a crowbar you exit the hole into a fully 3D but isometric view of the world, and from then on it's a lot of bashing. You bash flowers, zombies, fences, trashcans, traffic signs.. and everything gives you materials so you can upgrade your crowbar so you can bash even harder stuff like.. fridges.. The world is open, but like a Metroid game you can't get everywhere until you have the right tool (in this case an upgraded crowbar). You also run into missions and boss fights here and there. I think there's a story in there somewhere too.. It's addictive. I like it.

Oh, I forgot to write that I got my Steam Deck early April and have been trying it out since then. Battery time is as expected (not great) and the screen is only average (my phone looks sooo much better with its OLED colours and refresh rate) but other than that it's an awesome little machine. I have 557 games on my Steam account, 78 of which are "GREAT ON DECK" as they're called. 78. Out of 557. Yeah, they have some work to do, for sure. But the ones that work great really do work great! I've installed Grim Dawn, Dysmantle and Fez so far and they all run flawlessly at 60 fps. I know they're not the most demanding of games, but it's still a handheld and these are PC games after all. Very impressed with the performance. It came in this plastic packaging. Also this case which is pretty sweet. And this is the Deck itself! Ignore my pale, Swedish legs. I was working from home that day..

Playing Elex 2 right now (along with short bursts of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs: Legion and Far Cry 6.. that's a combined 500 hours right there!). I'm biased as hell since I'm a huge fan of Piranha Bytes ever since Gothic at the beginning of time, but I must say that Elex 2 is a return to form for Piranha Bytes in my opinion. Elex was.. ok. It introduced a new setting, a new main character and it was a good try at something new for the team (mix of tech and magic). It just ended up being so bland. The gameworld was colourless and repetitive, the enemies were the same as previous games except less colourful and the story was.. let's call it un-memorable (better than forgettable, shut up). Elex 2 started off horribly for me. The writing/editing in the first few minues was so bad I honestly didn't understand what was going on (I had forgotten a lot of Elex's story) and the starting area looked even blander than I remembered from Elex. But since I had pre-ordered (don't judge!) at almost full price, I pressed on. I fought a few weird creatures, climbed a few towers with my jetpack and lo and behold, slowly but surely I started getting that Piranha Bytes feeling back again. After a while I even started finding quests that were well written and the game started making sense. Not only that, some of the quests were actually interesting enough for me to want to solve them for reasons other than the reward at the end (not always a given, unfortunately)! The world feels much more varied this time around, the characters feel more fleshed out (and the dialogue is so encompassing, it feels like the characters have something to say about every scene, no matter which companion you happen to travel with) and the combat feels much better now (especially ranged). I do, however, also feel that they might have eased up on the difficulty level a tad bit too much. I can understand why they did it (judging by the feedback from the first game) but I think they might have overshot it. The main thing though is that this feels like a proper Piranha Bytes game again: open world, no hand holding, secrets around every corner, no quest markers/map icons/Ubi towers or any of that crap, just pure unadulterated violent exploration. I love it. I should probably mention that the jetpack is brilliant this time around and you'll actually get to use it to its full capacity for some of the game's more hidden stuff. Farting about around decaying skyscrapers is awesome. I've maxed out my character now and just entered chapter 3 so the game is starting to feel a bit long in the tooth. I'll probably stop running around so much and concentrate more on the actual story quests from now on. But it has definitely already given me my money's worth. Also, and this is definitely worth mentioning, I haven't had a single crash for over 90 hours! I haven't even encountered any bugs! That is amazing and such a gigantic change from, for example, the release of Gothic 3 (if anyone remembers that disaster). KUDOS TO YOU, PIRANHA BYTES!

Did anyone get one yet? I pre-ordered the 512GB version the day they let ut pre-order, but it still says Q2 for me.

I actually loved that game. I remember being so impressed that you could climb on top of felled enemies. Still very few games let you do that, usually you just clip straight through enemy bodies.

Playing Elex 2 (surprise, surprise): Having lots of fun with this game, but it's nearing the end now. I am completely overpowered after 87 fun hours exploring the world. Then I tried out alchemy and accidentally maxxed out every skill in the skill tree.. I had so much **** collected that I basically had endless potion making ingredients.

Gotta love the fact that I build an ITX for the first time in my life and immediately ALL GPU's grow 5 cm in length (2 inches) and refuse to fit in my beautiful little ITX case. Also, it seems they discontinued the blower style cards that I love (they were 26,8 cm, perfect for my case). GEE THANKS, GPU MAKERS

I bought Horizon Zero Dawn in the Steam summer sale and started it up yesterday. I am shocked by how good it's been so far. It's gorgeous, runs great on my machine, has a compelling story and it's surprisingly well-written with (some) characters that I actually care about. Also, it just opened up the world for me and that did not make it less awesome! Unless something happens after the lengthy intro, I am going to enjoy this game immensely.

I'm probably the only one excited, but.. Elex 2 gameplay video: You'll be flying this time, not only jetpack jumping. Let's hope they've toned down the initial difficulty just a tad bit this time.. even I, as a long time Piranha Bytes fan, felt the beginning part dragged on a little.

Why do Keyrock and my mom always play the same games?

The problem with this game is that the more bugs they remove, the more it becomes obvious that Cyberpunk 2077 really is just mediocre. I was too pre-occupied being angry at all the glitches and bugs to notice how shallow and empty this game really is. When those glitches and bugs are disappearing, all that's left is the facade of a game. Paper thin.

Well, I bought this game.. that was a mistake. Played it for about an hour before the bugs/general level of unfinishedness overwhelmed me. I'm hoping Cyberpunk 2077 has a similar journey as The Witcher 3 did, but so many systems seem to be missing or are so deeply broken that I have a difficult time keeping my hopes up. Still, I'm gonna wait for patches before I jump back in. Lots of patches. At least give me my modifiable cars, dammit!!

I actually downloaded Genshin Impact yesterday since everyone's talking about it (yes, even your grandma). Not sure what to think yet. Production values are super high but I get this foreboding feeling from the entire game that it's only done to make you get sucked in so deep that whenever the micro transactions appear, you're bound to spend hundreds just to keep up. So far it's been very enjoyable though, not gonna lie. I mean.. you get a wingsuit ten minutes in, in a city designed to be vertical. That alone had me giggling and jumping off buildings for ten minutes straight.

It still annoys me that MCA got a bad professional rep because of an accusation. At first I was also upset so I read up about it. Apparently the woman accusing him had been bought drinks by MCA on some convention (her accusation, "on the company card"), she followed him to his hotel room and he made a move on her (in her words, "even though I looked younger than I was", to somehow implicate that he went for minors). She turned him down, he stopped and that's it. End of story. I also saw some of the messages he had sent to various women. They were not pretty. But they were also not illegal in any sense. Dude is a creep and needs to step back and work on himself, definitely, but that does not mean he should be unhireable or shunned by the community. The punishment is too harsh for the deed. Also: don't compare him to Polanski. Polanski is a criminal and even comparing them drags MCA's name down to that level, subconsciously. Also, it makes you seem like one of those types who regularly draws comparisons to Hitler as soon as someone opposes you.

Maybe it's an old one and everyone has already played it, but.. I recently started playing ATOM: RPG and I must say I've been having a blast so far. It's an isometric (but 3D), turn-based RPG set in a post-apocalyptic Russia that's quite dialogue and skill-check heavy, in a good way. It's made by a Russian indie team so expect a lot of typos and syntactic errors, but it's still a well-written game with lots of unexpected dialogue, descriptions and humour. It very much resembles the old Fallout games (1 & 2), even down to using the same (I presume) font for conversations. A good sign saying a lot about how surprisingly complex this game is, is that I've started a second, parallel play-through before I've even finished my first game. The lure of finding out how a different build would behave in the game was simply too strong. I usually never do this, but so many options were locked out and so many situations could be solved in different ways that I couldn't help myself. Complex, indeed. I'm not very far in since the game has a semi-open overworld (just like the Fallouts) and I'm having too much fun trying to survive and explore without getting killed by random mutants or bandits. I've only managed to complete the first main mission and I've already spent 30+ hours in the game. The combat is not Jagged Alliance 2 caliber but at least I'm having more fun than watching 20 rats slowly taking their turns crawling across bad graphics (looking at you, Fallout). I also play this game with companions, something I also almost never do. Not sure why.. I even got myself my own slave girl! (don't ask) I'm at a point where I "unlocked" a home base that I just started upgrading (repairing water pumps and generators and such with my crappy repair skill). That's also surprisingly addictive, I can barely wait to see what I can do with it. Looking forward to going home from work today to continue playing.

Hey @Mikey Dowling, now that Microsoft owns the Fallout franchise, do you think it's possible you'll get to make another spin-off in that universe?

I have to drag someone down with me, might as well be a Finn.

Holy crap: https://wccftech.com/microsoft-has-acquired-bethesda-and-all-its-ips-from-elder-scrolls-to-doom/ Does this mean Obsidian gets a shot at Fallout again??

I like the first Twilight movie Fight me

Been playing Generation Zero for a while now. I know, I know, the game was blasted by reviewers and players for being repetitive, empty and dull. And it kinda is. But I bought it on the recommendation of one of my cousins and it didn't click for me for a year or so (I only tried it a handful of times). But recently I decided to start it up again and it has grown on me. It's still repetitive and empty, but for some reason I'm having fun with it. It's more a walking simulator than a shooter though. Anyhow, I just thought the views in this game can be kinda pretty. It's a good representation of Sweden in the eighties.

How on earth do you become a fanboy of a faceless brand? Why not just do yourself a favour and purchase whatever is the best at the moment of purchase? Right now the overwhelming majority of tech experts recommend Ryzen, your fanboing won't change that. I just recently switched from Intel to AMD myself. It's not that difficult, I promise.

Party based RPG's are only fun for people who like to play with dolls Isometric was a necessity of the time and is completely obsolete nowadays Bioware had writing that worked on nerds the same way Twilight worked on young girls: it was still **** Turn based games were made for people who can't think fast, and call it "strategic" to feel clever Fight me

I'm still very happy with my Ryzen 2700X. After tweaking my RAM timings (3600MHz, Cl15!) and overclocking it 10%, and still keeping thermals under control (admittedly using watercooling), I can't be anything but impressed. I was thinking about upgrading to a 3800X for a while, but.. there's really no need. Maybe when Gen 4 comes along..

Well, Bioware didn't exactly put the bar high with their "miniature giant space hamster" writing. I'm sure their humour will be more than adequate.