melkathi

I think my favourite Obsidian game will always be Alpha Protocol. Great writing, great characters and the one game where I felt Obsidian were doing completely their own thing. Kotor II, FONV, Mask of the Betrayer, they all were standing one another's work. Pillars was its own thing, but a homage to what had come before. Outer Worlds too often reminds of FO or ME or even Borderlands. But AP is just AP.

It's the third one in the past few months? They all have a username comprised of a first and last name. The first one I noticed was jamesbower, mostly as I have a friend by that name. It's that weird way they make bots wrong by trying to make them right "But I gave it a first and last name! How could they tell the account wasn't real?"

I like the new GOG launcher, as I have it linked to all the other launchers, so I have my library in one place and can launch everything from there (true, it then launches the other launchers, but I don't have to do it manually).

Finally someone else points out these one post wonders

You never told us, so I can't dig up the info for you Mine at some point last year (hah! It's next year now!) Autumn I think.

Happy New Year!

Colour coded choices terrible?

The people have the right to know the truth, Deb.

It was the best thing about the Beth ones. Though not redeeming enough for me to play FO4. Just as radio was what made Vice City so great.

Outer Worlds has a Fallout feel to it. So Fallouty in fact, I already had two corpses disappear - probably drop through the geometry and out of the game world. I miss the radio.

I may have to grab that then alongside a no attack mod so I can completely ignore them.

I haven't found the proper mod it seems. And I keep reading that the game world is empty without them?

I am looking at Outer Worlds in the Winter sale, as with the 10 off voucher on Epic, that would be a reasonable price.

I keep wanting to pick up my Fallout 4 playthrough, But I always remember the settlements and how tedious I find that kinds of gameplay so I don't even launch the game. I just wanted to explore the wasteland again, not have to build things

I knew you had it in you, champ!

Should have made it a Roguelike Point & Click Adventure game. With procedural generated interactive points for QTE pixel hunting.

Steam seems to be breaking down again due to the start of the Winter Sale. The Epic store seems also to be having trouble (they are doing a different free game every day aparently and some $10 coupon thing).

Yeah, the campaign is bad. This is the first AoW game where I ignored the campaign and spend more time playing skirmish maps. Those can be far more interesting.

Just got back from the new Star Wars. That montage early on may very well be taught in film schools around the world for years to come, so students can see what not to do. Possibly the worst cut together scenes in movie history. People in the theatre enjoyed the movie as a big bundle of fan service but with the disclaimer that they understood that it probably was a terrible movie when judged just as a movie. One of my friends got up and left during the movie. I considered it.

2019 saw quite a few games, and I think I ignored most of them. My personal gaming highlight was finally finishing Chaos Gate after 20 years. Of games that released this year, it seems I played 12. And an expansion. So in random order (because the term random has to appear somewhere in these kind of topics on this forum) : Breach was this year's grand failure. A multiplayer game with one player taking on the role of the bad guy and the rest teaming up to defeat them. It had a lot of potential and when it worked it was fun. But they may have entered early access too early. Or perhaps the idea was too complicated to ever properly balance. The community was too small, the wait times too long, and the skill and power difference between players too great, so the game was removed from the Steam store and the server shut down. Age of Wonders: Planetfall took the loved franchise away from fantasy and catapulted it into science fiction. It did a lot right with new systems, using the new setting to improve and innovate. It also did some things wrong. The new research felt dull. The economic research tree especially felt like the same slog every game. I'm waiting for the next DLC (one is already out), but mostly hope for more customization options for my leaders - they all look too alike. Triumph joining the Paradox family of course had people worried about nickle and diming with lots of tiny DLC, but so far that hasn't happened. Dark Future: Blood Red States was a hell of a lot of fun during the beta weekend. The launch version not so much - some missions had gotten so easy I could play through them literally without looking at the screen. Auroch has worked on the game and improved difficulty, making exploding cars a lot more fun again. Re-Legion is a cyberpunk RTS with a lot of neon. The premise is great, and you do get to make choices in shaping your cult. The gameplay seems to have you rushing your opponent though with a lot of converted civilians turned soldier, hoping your numbers are greater than his. So basically it is Syndicate's Persuadatron turned into a game of it's own. As an RTS not memorable. As a persuadatron horde simulation? Great. Woven had failed on Kickstarter. People are idiots. Or don't check Kickstarter for computer games for their kids. Woven is cute and well written with exploration kept interesting through little puzzles. My problem? Missing a collectable in an area I can't return to. Now I have to restart. Again. Spellcaster University is a casual Hogwarts simulation, where you build a new wizarding school to train wizards to face the Dark Lord. Cute graphics and quirky options can sometimes be overshadowed by bad luck with random events and simply not drawing the card you need. Narcos: Rise of the Cartels is not a bad game. But it isn't a great game either, but had people hoping for something like XCOM. Eventually I'll finish it. But with so many options out there, and the ability to just play old Jagged Alliance games, it just hasn't managed to convince me that there is a reason for it. Stygian has so much potential to be one of the best RPG games. Sadly the Kickstarter did not net as much money as the devs would have needed to complete their vision. They tried anyway and ran out of money. They released the game and did not slap an Early Access label on, which many believe was a mistake. Instead of people getting a half finished game with potential to improve and a clear indication of this, people were sold a complete game which was half finished. The devs disagree, but are pretty alone with that opinion. What is there is amazing. But it is impossible to overlook the big hole left by the things that aren't there. Pine has you exploring an island, searching for a new home for your tribe. You enjoy long walks on the beach, the mountains, the swamp, the forest... gather materials to craft new equipment and cook food to eat. You meet a number of tribes of animal people and eventually have to ally with one to gain the assistance you need to establish a new home for the humans of the island. I find it hard to decide who to ally with, but also to remember what resource I get where. Phoenix Point came with a lot of promise and riled people with the Epic store timed exclusivity. In the end people who'll wait a year may get a good game. In the current state the game just isn't there yet. Not because it is inherently bad (though the free aim issues should have been fixed a year ago), but because there is so much missing and the devs don't seem to understand what the game promises. Vampire: the Masquerade - Coteries of New York "gets" the World of Darkness like no vampire game has before. It doesn't get it's chosen medium. A visual novel RPG where no choices matter and the player, regardless of character or decisions during the game, is railroaded into one, single ending. And the store had promised multiple ending. Now it promises multiple variants of the ending. And on a personal note, and a lifelong Brujah, that is not what I pictured when I was promised a Brujah. Carpocalypse I haven't played enough and am missing screenshots. You take on the roll of a little girl (Jess) who's family moves to a new town where she goes to a new school. Everyone at the school is playing this one card game that is super popular. And which promptly gets banned when weird things start to happen. Build your deck and battle other kids in card battles, while exploring a story which seems similar in tone to Costume Quest. I'm looking forward to actually playing through this one. Spellforce 3: Soulstorm was the DLC for Spellforce 3 that released this year and motivated me to also finish the core game. The story helped flesh out the history of the game world, though the new UI and keybinding was extremely confusing. Spellforce 3 had moved away from the old formula, which was bad enough, but just as I had gotten used to it, the DLC changed everything again, feeling even more alien. On top of that, the game was obviously written in English, even though it is a German series, with a bad translation. That left a very sour taste.

The store description claims there are more endings, but the players refuse to count the ability to commit suicide two ways in one specific situation early on as extra endings

So, Coteries basically allows for two playthroughs so you can do all side-missions. Three if you want to play around with some choices in some of them. The game apparently only has one ending, a very disappointing fact.

Good article. And nice to see he is aware of Fate of the World.

Finished my first playthrough of Coteries. Yes, depending on reading speed I'd say between 4 and 5 hours. You don't get to finish all side missions, so on a future playthrough you can do different things. It may matter how early you do certain things. I think there were 3 typos (Boos instead of Boss at one point) and they were all pretty close to one another. Once a character called another Declan, just for the story to then tell you that Raoul walks away... I found it a bit stiff that sometimes you are referred to as "they" because they didn't have the text adapt to your gender. That said: very atmospheric vampire game. The visual novel medium allows it to tackle the subject of a fledgling vampire struggling with suddenly being a monster; the underlying struggle of every vampire to stay sane. Obviously some clans will make for a more interesting tale than others. Going to play it again to see if there is a different ending.