Hawke64

I've claimed it and got a gift certificate that expires in February. Happy to send if anyone wants the game and missed the giveaway.

Sifu is free on EGS for the next 10 hours.

Finished Twin Mirror. It is a 3D point-and-click-style adventure. The story follows a freelance journalist whose friend died under mysterious circumstances. The puzzles are on the easier side and the number of retries is mostly unlimited, but the developers managed to implement pixel hunting in 3D - not only do you need to find the interaction point, you also need to position the main character at the right angle for the interaction prompt to appear. Some objects must be interacted with in a specific order, which occasionally leads to rather funny situations - at one point, the MC can run circles around the hostile locals before going to the objective (to look at a locked door from a distance), but once it is done, the locals try to physically assault the MC (not because of the door, because they actually did not see him 1 meter away before that). The main gameplay systems are the dialogues, with the helpful social imaginary friend commenting on the available options, general puzzles (e.g. finding a password to a computer), and the “Mind Palace”, the protagonist’s ability to recreate past events based on the uncovered evidence. They are mandatory to complete, the number of retries is unlimited, and there is only one correct solution. The only drawback is rewatching the cut-scene. Speaking of, the cut-scenes are unskippable, which makes replaying the game significantly less appealing. Other, less used, mechanics include a running and dodging sequence and some sort of quick-time events. There are also optional collectibles hidden around, but I did not look for them - walking around was very slow and quite boring, despite the locations being small. The graphics and sound are serviceable - nothing amazingly beautiful, nothing too horrible, good variety of character models, and a few original areas. The game would have been better in 2D pixel art style, but the developer seems to like 3D and unskippable cut-scenes. I played on Steam Deck, so cannot tell whether the controls are rebindable. The number of save slots is limited to 4 (it is possible to copy the saves between slots in-game) and the game auto-saves the progress, so Windows Explorer is still a better option. I have not encountered any bugs during my 7-hour-long playthrough. The aspects that elevate my opinion of the game are the endings and the not-terrible representation of the mental health issues (the MC mostly copes with it well and effectively shuts down during panic attacks; it is never explicitly stated what these issues are). The story branches close to the end and the choice affects the gameplay system used for the final confrontation and the epilogue. The differences are stark and playing through both endings was incredibly amusing. I also liked that the story was largely self-contained and the main conflicts were resolved satisfactorily. Overall, it was a positive experience and I would recommend to try it at least once, but when the game is heavily discounted (~75%-80%). I thank ShadySands for the key. --- As with D:OS, the player is expected to interact with the systems, i.e. cheese the fights* (stealth, barrels, talking, etc.). I found the animations to range from ridiculous to atrocious (especially the facial animations for the PC), but the immersive sim elements allowed to decrease the exposure to them* (the cut-scenes locking the characters in place were somewhat funny, but usually worked for the foes as well), which I greatly appreciate. Granted, the combat and the cut-scenes became harder to avoid from the end of Act 2 and onwards, excluding the spoiler below, but at least the latter were skippable. *a vague spoiler for Act 3:

Thank you for sharing. I suppose, "more action, more weapons, more graphics", and more padding are the exact opposite of what I wanted to see, but I can understand the desire to increase the production costs and tap into the AAA market. Still, the writing and the music in the trailer are very nice and I hope it goes well for Obsidian. Also the Steam store page description is much more promising* and if the DRM-free version with more reasonable system requirements (20-30GB to download, 2-4GB VRAM to run) is available, I would be happy to purchase it on release at full price and £10 on top for saving my bandwidth, storage space, and energy. *https://store.steampowered.com/app/1449110/The_Outer_Worlds_2/

Thank you for the insight. I suppose, if there is no GOG version in a few months, I am going to wait at least for a sale on Steam. Then again, I love Obsidian’s art and would rather prefer them to avoid the same fate as Arkane and Tango Gameworks. Complicated. Thank you very much for the link! I did not think that such a specific mod existed. Definitely will install for the next playthrough.

Is there any chance for Avowed to be available on GOG? Considering my previous experience when a patch significantly worsened the respective game (mostly, Pillars of Eternity II and the Blackwood Hull broken into logs to pad the playtime; to less extent, Tyranny and changing Tunon's reactions during the final trial), I would like to have more control over my purchase. Due to these flaws (and my lack of wisdom to request the code for GOG when I backed PoEII and patience to wait for the GOG version for The Outer Worlds), I have repurchased Obsidian games in the past, but the £60 price tag strongly discourages doing so now. On a related note, again, coming from the previous experience, when approximately the GOTY edition should be expected (so I know when the deadline to purchase without having to rollback the version)? EA recently managed to release an AAA action-RPG reasonably bug-free and content-complete (so no waiting for months or paying extra to get the full experience). I would like to believe that Obsidian can achieve the same feat, especially considering the higher price.

After looking at SteamDB, there are only 5 Steam regions where the price matches suggested by Valve (the US, Canada, South Asia, South Africa, the CIS countries); for Switzerland, it is -5%; for the rest, it is higher by variable amounts, from 2% to 128%; for the Russian Steam region the game is not available at all. I guess, I was hoping for $40 and the questionable honour of being a paying beta-tester (would have purchased at launch). The $70 price tag is a bit too much with the inevitable GOTY edition in a year, high system requirements, and Steam not playing nicely with updates (I still remember the last update for Deadfire significantly worsening the experience). I shall try to wait patiently for the GOG release, the Certainly Complete Definitive edition, and the price I can accept. Still, I hope the launch will be successful for Obsidian, regardless of the pricing issues.

The Veilguard is available on Steam with only one layer of DRM this time and EA App is a rather unpleasant piece of software, so, unless there is some gotcha, Steam might be the better option.

It also makes the environment harder to read, so we get the yellow paint on the breakable barrels. Since it was bothering me a lot during my Steelrising playthrough, I would like to share - some platforms could be jumped on/ledge-grabbed and also there were special hook points. The former were usually marked by white chalk or cloth and the latter by amber lights (and an interaction prompt). The thing is that the white cloth often was hanging on random non-grabbale fences and platforms and all street lights were amber (not in the "look, the path/loot is here" way). Same with the slightly-broken bushes and random indoor doors* - some were walls, some were paths, and the only way to find out which is which is by trying to pass through/open them. *the outdoor gates had clear indicators that they were openable - a small wooden lock panel in the middle. --- EA App. This piece of DRM refused to launch Dragon Age: Inquisition after a week, so I uninstalled the app, forgetting that it also removes the save files. On a positive note, I have managed to un**** Origin (by dropping a totally-not-suspicious DLL into its folder), which is still a very good reason to pirate every last EA release, but it at least runs offline. Ironically, the game looks much better than Steelrising, because the style, unlike the tech, remains.

Finished Steelrising. 20FPS in some areas definitely was not exactly comfortable. The hitboxes are very tight (the foes miss a lot) and the difficulty overall is on the easier side. The writing is rather odd - between the occasional random French words (why???) and all characters having more random memory gaps (a major plot point was explained, everyone was calm, then in the next scene it was explained again, everyone was shocked). The level design is Spiders and I would not be able to finish the side quests without the compass (a regular in-game item, not an accessibility setting). The rebindable controls and the somewhat customisable character were most welcome.

Steelrising The game can look beautiful. The seat is unusable and I do not believe that it existed. The game at least tries to do social commentary (looking up the historical figures, though, does not increase the enjoyment). This door required me to progress the main quest. I was not able to break or anyhow unlock it myself. The NPCs are sitting in one spot and picking all the side quests together, then reporting back together led to this picture. The thing I really like is that the enemies' attacks hurt them as well. All NPC share the same pool of facial animations and sometimes they look rather odd. It was not sarcastic. The end-game map. The last area. Since none are exactly original, no spoiler tags for it. What did that meatbag do with the face? The final boss.

Tails of Iron I cannot tell whether the story is meant to be taken at the face value (a young monarch saving his land from very evil invaders) or not. The first death. The bard was barding. End-/post-game.

Finished Tails of Iron. It is an action-adventure with Metroidvania elements. The main recommendations to make the experience less unpleasant are to start on the lower difficulty and to disable the narration - while the protagonist is as genocidal as an average action game MC, the narration brings attention to it and not the Spec Ops: The Line type. The combat is in general slow and most of it is unavoidable, with the foes being invincible while they are walking towards the middle of the screen (about 20% from the border) during these combat encounters. There is not much exploration - 3 large maps + the final area + 1 post-game side quest. The regular side quests available during the main story are in fact mandatory - they reward with gold and the items or upgrades necessary to progress require the exact amount that the side quests provide (the rewards in the post-game can be spent on the optional visual upgrades for the base). The amount of backtracking is rather frustrating - only one side quest from a board (1-2 per map) can be active simultaneously, so circling between the deepest level of a dungeon and back to the board several times is the opposite of fun. The story is linear, with the map opening up only in the post-game, the character development system consists only of health upgrades (3 specific food ingredients provide 1 upgrade, 4 upgrades in total). There are several types of weapons (melee, 1- and 2-handed, ranged, and shields) and armour (head/body light, medium, heavy). The separation by weight is not exactly noticeable - the late-game light armour provides as much protection as the heavy one. On the positive side, the art is gorgeous, similar to old illustrated books. The bosses are reasonably varied and their movesets and appearance change during battle as they take damage. The NPC companions cannot die (cannot be targeted either) and provide some additional damage. Some of them also provide soundtrack.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/frostyforest/dandd-adventure-the-smuggler-the-baker-the-grim-undertaker/description Backed this. So, now I (probably) will have a short D&D compaign.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2458310/New_Arc_Line/ The demo is available for download until whenever the developers take it down (until October 21?), but it runs without Steam. It crashed on me trice, then I found it too challenging to read the in-game text (the font is too small), so I can't exactly say that I've played it much. --- https://www.gog.com/en/game/atlas_fallen_reign_of_sand Atlas Fallen is available on GOG with 50% discount (55% if you have an account there). It is from The Surge developers and the system requirements look reasonable, so I am quite interested in the game, but probably closer to the winter holidays.