Keyrock

Dear God NOOOOOOO! I have no qualms with an Arcanum sequel/reboot/reimagining being first person, even with action-oriented combat, but keep it as far away from anything Bethesda as possible.

I wholeheartedly agree... with 2 caveats. Make the combat not suck (pick turn-based or real-time and stick with it, don't try a hybrid again) and find at least some balance between magic and technology (to say Arcanum was unbalanced in this regard would be the understatement of the century).

Your character or you from looking at so much bloody bloom?

That game is at the very top of my list of games I want to play, but, as is my policy with episodic games, I'm not touching it until all episodes are out. Given the pace at which episodes have come out thus far, 2018 seems likely for the 5th and final episode. I'll buy and play it then.

I went all the way back to the very starting area in Axiom Verge and combed all the early areas of the game for places I couldn't (or just didn't) reach before. There were quite a few of them. I didn't find anything revolutionary down the new paths I was now able to access (there are still some places I can't cross too), but I did find a couple range upgrades and a bunch of health and power node fragments, which eventually add up to health and power upgrades. Hopefully none of the remaining boss fights are as frustrating as Gir-Tab, but if they are, I'm going to need all the health and power upgrades I can get my grubby little hands on. I also keep finding what seem to be journals of some sort, but I can't read them because they're either in languages I can't understand or encrypted. Hopefully I get a translator/decryption tool eventually. Now that I've combed all the old areas, it's time to explore some completely new locations.

Many many years ago when I was just a wee lad we visited a friend out in Cali for a few days and on one day my folks took me out for a drive out into the desert. Driving down a perfectly straight road with barely anything on the horizon and nothing on either side for miles and miles was one of the most surreal things I've ever experienced. You could barely tell you were moving and there was really nothing to gauge your own speed. There was just this vast nothingness with only a cactus here or there and a store or gas station every 30 miles or so. There's nothing comparable, to the best of my knowledge, on the east coast.

I find a certain beauty to the Mojave Desert, probably because it's just so alien and different compared to the forests, plains, rivers, and scattered ponds and small lakes of the areas I've lived in for most of my life.

I wanted to get into it, but it's super grindy. Very little turns me off like grinding. For me Sunless Sea didn't really get grindy until after 15 hours or so, at which point I was constantly visiting the same places again and again and seeing the same encounters again and again. The first 10 hours of the game, though, were amazing, as I was constantly discovering new places and getting new encounters, all while cutting it really close with my money and fuel, sweating bullets on the way back to London. The setting and writing is what carried the game for me. The writing is just so damn great and the setting so bizarre that reading the bajillion lines text was a real pleasure. The game lost me when it became apparent that it would take insane amounts of grinding to get the necessary vessel and goodies to get to the end game stuff, at which point I gave up on it and never returned. Still, I don't regret buying or playing the game one bit. The money and time I spend was completely worth it for the first 10 hours of wonder.

If you just want to pledge 20 or 50 bucks and (potentially) get the game ang a hat or something, it's essentially the same as Kickstarter. The investment thing is a bit suspect, though, if you read the fine print. It's set up in a way where Fig absolves iyself of the vast majority of responsibilities and removes much of the legal recourse available to the investor should the project go sour. Also, the project would need to be wildly succesful for the investor to make any sort of significant profit. In short, it's an extremely risky investment with only a small chance of significant returns, the kind of thing no seasoned investor would ever seriously entertain.

Masochistic?

W3 prototype images:

I quite enjoyed Wasteland 2 and am looking forward to playing W3. That said, I'm done with crowdfunding, so Fargo & Co ain't getting no money in advance from me.

It's a bit clunky but it was a fun 2D Deus Ex. Payed €18 or something for it and was fairly happy with that. 2D Deus Ex, eh? Color me interested. Can you ghost it? I haven't played very much of it, but it's kind of like SNES Shadowrun mixed with a beat 'em up. I'm not using the stealth approach, though. Mostly been using the 'punch anything that moves' approach. But you can stealth at least some of it? You don't have to kill everyone?

It's a bit clunky but it was a fun 2D Deus Ex. Payed €18 or something for it and was fairly happy with that. 2D Deus Ex, eh? Color me interested. Can you ghost it?

The first batch of games had nothing I was interested in, but they updated with new games and I see Dex for 67% off. Has anyone played that? Is it worth a five-er?

I feel like Michel Ancel is just trolling us and has been the whole time. Go **** yourself, Michel, I'm not falling for your **** again.

Loved Starflight 1 & 2. There was a fan game SF3 project some years ago. I'm not sure if it was ever finished.

I friend-zoned Triss in my Witcher games, mind you I don't have 3 yet. Shani is the woman for me. These sorceresses are a bit too crazy for my liking.

Freedom Planet is really good. If you'd like to revisit the glory days of side-scrolling games on the Genesis, and not just a game that looks like a Genesis game but also understands proper level design, this is a game you should play.

I highly recommend it. Outside of the Gir-Tab fight, I've enjoyed pretty much every minute of the game so far (even wandering aimlessly for an hour, that's part of the metroidvania process). It's the best Metroid fix you can get outside of a Nintendo platform and, given that Samus Aran has quite possibly been retired to solely doing Smash Bros appearances going forward, it's likely the best Metroid fix you can get on any platform going forward. Also, the soundtrack is really good.

Exciting times for me in Axiom Verge. Not too long ago I was pretty stuck in the game and couldn't figure out where to go or how to get back to earlier areas of the game and spent a good hour or more just wandering aimlessly. Eventually I figured it out, then I got stuck on a crappy boss fight, got past that with the help of a cheese tactic I found online, then finally acquired the grapple which allowed me to reach a host of places I couldn't before (and to go back to earlier areas). Now I have so many new places to visit it's almost overwhelming, which is great because I love exploring in this game. I also got a new gun, but I've yet to see the value in it.

Things I a tired of in video games: Open world Procedural generation Crafting

There are several problems with a hybrid handheld/home console design. It is extremely difficult to fit hardware powerful enough to even come close to current gen home consoles into a handheld, and even if you could fit hardware that powerful into a unit that small it would be prohibitively expensive. So then you have the multi processor concept where the handheld unit has its own set of processors that can achieve decent visuals on a little screen and another set of processors in the dock that can be added to the overall processing power to create home console level visuals on a bigger screen. While having multiple CPUs and multiple GPUs working in tandem is far from impossible, it's much easier to achieve when the sets of CPUs and the sets of GPUs are identical, which they obviously wouldn't be in this case. Having different types or power levels of CPUs and GPUs working together is feasible, but it does add an extra level of complexity to everyone involved in the process, including game developers. Then the developer has to design 2 sets of configurations, one for the handheld on its own and one for the full power dock + handheld combo. Again, doable, but that's extra work and complexity. What I'm trying to say is, remember all the problems the Wii U had with 3rd party support? This wouldn't help matters.

But if you want good quality graphics on the handheld you need to carry another brick with you in addition to the handheld itself.