Video Games- Game of the Year

[Soylent Brown]

Well the highlight of my gaming 2020 is that I just sold an item on the Steam community market to '⛧ [.Big Ḿusky Đaddy.] ⛧'

[briantw]

Today's free Epic game is Jurassic World Evolution, a competent little dinosaur park-building game.  I got it from one of the Humble monthly bundles and it's a fun enough way to kill a couple of days during our never ending quarantine.  Freeing a T-Rex and letting him start massacring guests is amusing, as is creating a dino fight club by putting dinosaurs that can't live together in the same habitat.

[The Drunkard]

I didn't play many games last year but I bought CK3 for Christmas, as CK2 was probably my most played game ever (possibly 2nd to WoW), and have been playing a lot of that this last week.

A surprising change is that crusades seem hard now. Playing as a catholic, we won the first crusade for Jerusalem, only for the kingdom to be slowly chipped away over the ensuing years, and the next 3(!) crusades to restore the kingdom's de jure borders were all resoundingly crushed by the Abassids. Only after I went a little holy war-crazy in Spain and Scandinavia did Europe seem to have enough catholic rulers to win the (hopefully final) fifth crusade for Jerusalem. 

Also, getting poisoned by your son - to whom you have gifted a kingdom and have +100 opinion with - is a real betrayal. Made me not want to play as him.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Well the first time through I got the Black Hat's story, second time through I was the hero. Once I clear out the back part of RDR2, it's on to GTA5.

[l2 0 5 5]

Been fucking around with Oblivion recently. The game is probably somewhere around 7 or 8 in terms of most logged minutes all time for me. I was taken aback slightly with how aged the game looks when you exit the sewers, but I looked past it quickly and started mowing over imps and mudcrabs on my way to Chorrol and then Kvatch. Took me a minute to remember that dreadful speech wheel, but it was like picking up a bike after years of sitting in the garage. Got owned quite a few times in Oblivion, but remembered how frequently you have to save. Every guy in the game, green or grey, is a chiseled god. No one at the Blades Temple has the time of day to talk to you. 

I missed this game so much. And that soundtrack.... 

[Inkdaub]

I got AC Origins, Ezio Collection and Shadow of War on sale on my XBox.  I will wait on Valhalla and Fenyx Rising and others until I get a Series X or a PS5...if that indeed ever comes to pass.  I plan to try Origins tonight.

[Werthead]

12 hours ago, l2 0 5 5 said:

Been fucking around with Oblivion recently. The game is probably somewhere around 7 or 8 in terms of most logged minutes all time for me. I was taken aback slightly with how aged the game looks when you exit the sewers, but I looked past it quickly and started mowing over imps and mudcrabs on my way to Chorrol and then Kvatch. Took me a minute to remember that dreadful speech wheel, but it was like picking up a bike after years of sitting in the garage. Got owned quite a few times in Oblivion, but remembered how frequently you have to save. Every guy in the game, green or grey, is a chiseled god. No one at the Blades Temple has the time of day to talk to you. 

I missed this game so much. And that soundtrack.... 

Skyblivion is looking good, although updating Oblivion to Skyrim's engine is a fairly minor upgrade in the grand scheme of things, but those six years or so do make a difference.

Base Oblivion + graphics mods can still produce great results in 2020. Apart from horses, which are nightmare fuel.

[Fez]

I picked up the Resident Evil 2 remake, but had to refund it. It would crash every single time I tried interacting with a typewriter or a fuse box, which made the gameplay unplayable. But it otherwise ran great, so I don't think it was an issue with my GPU overheating (which, supposedly the crash message I was getting is usually a sign of).

So instead I picked up Borderlands 3 for less than $10 (thanks to that kinda insane recurring EGS coupon they give out during sales). It's... okay. Feels almost exactly like Borderlands 2 so far. Possibly a good time waster though.

I've also started another playthrough of Divinity Original Sin 2. But I'm not sure I'll be able to make it too far. I'm mid-way through Reapers Coast and everything is just too familiar to me. I've only beaten the game once, but I've gotten to the end of Reapers Coast I think 2 other times; and I guess it's just too much. Even though I really would like to see the redone Act IV.

[Werthead]

Bethesda teasing a new Elder Scrolls thing, which has people confused.

The map has three candles: one in Hammerfell, one in Solitude and one illuminating a bunch of coins. The coins are the special limited edition coins given away for last year's big Elder Scrolls Online expansion, Greymoor, and the candle in Solitude is referencing last year's Dark Heart of Skyrim story arc. Oddly, though, none of the candles are referencing the next expansion, The Gates of Oblivion, which is due in March (for the 15th anniversary of Oblivion itself), which is going to flesh out some elements in Cyrodill (at the bottom-right of this map but here completely unmarked).

The candle in Hammerfell is a reasonable nod to Elder Scrolls VI being set there, which we already kind of knew from the leak of the working title, Redfall. The only odd thing about that is that Elder Scrolls VI is probably 5+ years away, as the game isn't even in full-time development yet with the team still hard at work on SF epic Starfield, which hasn't gotten a release date yet. Teasing Elder Scrolls VI now rather than the game which is likely to come out much sooner than that is a bit weird.

This is Bethesda though, who are not always known for the most logical behaviour.

 

 

[Impmk2]

52 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The only odd thing about that is that Elder Scrolls VI is probably 5+ years away, as the game isn't even in full-time development yet with the team still hard at work on SF epic Starfield, which hasn't gotten a release date yet. Teasing Elder Scrolls VI now rather than the game which is likely to come out much sooner than that is a bit weird.

This is Bethesda though, who are not always known for the most logical behaviour.

5+ years?! So that would mean around 15 years between TES games. Seems like a stupid long time, even for AAA games these days. Do Bethesda not like money?

 

[GallowKnight]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

Bethesda teasing a new Elder Scrolls thing, which has people confused.

The map has three candles: one in Hammerfell, one in Solitude and one illuminating a bunch of coins. The coins are the special limited edition coins given away for last year's big Elder Scrolls Online expansion, Greymoor, and the candle in Solitude is referencing last year's Dark Heart of Skyrim story arc. Oddly, though, none of the candles are referencing the next expansion, The Gates of Oblivion, which is due in March (for the 15th anniversary of Oblivion itself), which is going to flesh out some elements in Cyrodill (at the bottom-right of this map but here completely unmarked).

The candle in Hammerfell is a reasonable nod to Elder Scrolls VI being set there, which we already kind of knew from the leak of the working title, Redfall. The only odd thing about that is that Elder Scrolls VI is probably 5+ years away, as the game isn't even in full-time development yet with the team still hard at work on SF epic Starfield, which hasn't gotten a release date yet. Teasing Elder Scrolls VI now rather than the game which is likely to come out much sooner than that is a bit weird.

This is Bethesda though, who are not always known for the most logical behaviour.

 

 

Obviously they saw how well the super early announcement worked for Cyberpunk 2077 and decided to get in on that.

[RumHam]

16 hours ago, Werthead said:

for the 15th anniversary of Oblivion itself

I did not need to read that. I remember already thinking I was old when that game came out. 

[Werthead]

16 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

5+ years?! So that would mean around 15 years between TES games. Seems like a stupid long time, even for AAA games these days. Do Bethesda not like money?

I think Bethesda realised that people had become huge fans of their particular style of open-world RPG and people will show up for that regardless. They saw Fallout 4 as the follow-up, at least thematically and in terms of technology, to Skyrim, even if it was set in a different universe and in a different genre, and they expect the same large fanbase and sales for Starfield. Although the performance of Fallout 76 might make them want to seriously reconsider that.

But yeah, 13-15 years between Elder Scrolls games when the previous largest gap was 5 years is pretty daft, and I can imagine some senior suits at Zenimax wondering if this was a really good idea (not to mention senior suits at Rockstar wondering where the hell GTA VI is eight years after the last game, but at least GTA Online is mollifying them).

[Jace, Extat]

50 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I think Bethesda realised that people had become huge fans of their particular style of open-world RPG and people will show up for that regardless. They saw Fallout 4 as the follow-up, at least thematically and in terms of technology, to Skyrim, even if it was set in a different universe and in a different genre, and they expect the same large fanbase and sales for Starfield. Although the performance of Fallout 76 might make them want to seriously reconsider that.

But yeah, 13-15 years between Elder Scrolls games when the previous largest gap was 5 years is pretty daft, and I can imagine some senior suits at Zenimax wondering if this was a really good idea (not to mention senior suits at Rockstar wondering where the hell GTA VI is eight years after the last game, but at least GTA Online is mollifying them).

Making a new video game is expensive and hard. Why do that when you could just keep selling an old game on different systems with minute graphics improvements?

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Making a new video game is expensive and hard. Why do that when you could just keep selling an old game on different systems with minute graphics improvements?

Well, Rockstar are certainly doing both. Bethesda seem to have given that up for now.

[IlyaP]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Well, Rockstar are certainly doing both. Bethesda seem to have given that up for now.

Zenimax Online Studio Director Matt Firor posted this update recently, which doesn't really say anything we didn't already know. 

 

[Rhom]

Managed to secure a PS5 from Best Buy today.  Will be available for in store pick up on the 17th.

I think the part that I'm most happy about is that I can unfollow about a half dozen skeezy Twitter accounts.  (While admitting that I never would have gotten this one without following them...)

[Slurktan]

3 hours ago, Rhom said:

Managed to secure a PS5 from Best Buy today.  Will be available for in store pick up on the 17th.

I think the part that I'm most happy about is that I can unfollow about a half dozen skeezy Twitter accounts.  (While admitting that I never would have gotten this one without following them...)

Grats!  As far as I've played the only real PS5 game thus far still is the Demon's Souls remake which is funny as it's a 13 year old game.  However it truly is streets ahead of everything else thus far in terms of graphics and sound.  Everything else is bumped up PS4 games.  They also have/had a great thing going where you get a lot of classic PS4 games for signing up for PS Plus like God of War.  The UI takes some time getting used to but it has grown on me slowly.

[Werthead]

Started a replay of the Metro series ahead of playing Metro: Exodus for the first time. The Redux edition of Metro 2033 does make the game marginally less insane than the original was and certainly a lot prettier, but it's still a tough game, but also a really superb, atmospheric one. Luckily this time around I knew how the stealth system worked (or even that the game had one; Metro 2033 seems to regard the notion of telling people how to play it with complete contempt) which has made the various enemy base assaults more manageable.

[Rhom]

58 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

Grats!  As far as I've played the only real PS5 game thus far still is the Demon's Souls remake which is funny as it's a 13 year old game.  However it truly is streets ahead of everything else thus far in terms of graphics and sound.  Everything else is bumped up PS4 games.  They also have/had a great thing going where you get a lot of classic PS4 games for signing up for PS Plus like God of War.  The UI takes some time getting used to but it has grown on me slowly.

I thought there was a PS5 version of Ghost of Tsushima, but I seem to be mistaken.  I have the Miles Morales game already (long story).

I will pick up another controller, but it looks like the official charging station is nowhere to be found.