Video Games- At least 2023 looks like a banger

[Poobah]

Slime Rancher 2 came out into early access, it's awesome and a welcome wholesome distraction from the horrors of reality.

[Rhom]

Trails from Zero officially released today.  I played the (near professional quality) fan translation a year and a half ago, but I wanted to support the publisher by purchasing the game.  I got it via GoG.  Frustrating, because it has the same problem Cold Steel 4 has in that it won't recognize my Dual Shock 4.  All six of the other games in the series work fine with it, but these two are dead.

The work around I found for CS4 works with Zero... I add the game as a Non-Steam game to my Steam library and launch from there and it works perfectly.  Recognizes the button prompts and everything.  Kinda defeats the purpose of purchasing on GoG though.   

[polishgenius]

On 9/21/2022 at 2:37 PM, Fez said:

 

Still waiting on an AAA game to draw me in since Elden Ring. I tried out the demo for Square's The DioField Chronicle, which is $60 but sure isn't AAA.

 

I wasn't particularly interested in this in the first place but my alarm bells rang when I saw that the development team said something along the lines of 'everyone does grid-based tactics now so we decided to shake up the field a bit'. Like they thought they were revolutionising the genre by making something that isn't Fire Emblem or Triangle Strategy. And what you describe bears that fear out coz it very much sounds like someone's made a game in a genre they haven't played in depth, and therefore made something quite shallow.  

 

 

 

 

Anyway I started The Spirit and the Mouse, a just-released indie that's basically the direct opposite of Untitled Goose Game. It's a horrible evening in the village and you are a lovely mouse.

[Toth]

So I continued meeting up with the Dead by Daylight squad that invited me and... it's a rough experience. Sure enough, I managed to recover somewhat from the unrelated anxieties that made me unnecessarily tense about it, but the game experience... Sigh... I'm really not used to PvP and find it altogether a miserable experience that leaves me really wondering why I'm doing this to myself. If I play survivor, I loose. If I play killer, I loose. The learning effect on that is pretty small I think. The matchmaking is also abysmal. Every game I play as survivor, I go against a fully kitted out purple meta perks killer; while every time I play as killer I go against 20 prestige full meta perks survivors. And I'm just standing there making a complete full out of myself, get teabagged to hell and leave with one or no kills and almost no points.

So basically the others have been playing the game already for more than a month and regularly post about their wins and I'm sitting there feeling bad that I'm only in their way. Then again, whenever we play together (I joined them three times in two weeks) we get slaughtered mercilessly, sometimes even clearly through my fault (I threw away a game against Wesker when one of us got hooked at the other side of the map and while another was going for the rescue (the third was dead), I was busy opening the exit instead of helping out and so the rescuer also got downed and I ended up the only survivor. My only match so far where I had survived even.

With them being so experienced, our perks by now being relatively good and the game usually very Survivor sided, I had been wondering whether we just need a strategy to spread out and focus down generators, especially when I'm hooked, because unhooking and healing me keeps interrupting our flow. But they claim we just need more practice, better perks and more luck, saying the killers we were up against were always too nasty. Well, until we met that first game hillbilly who still shredded us, never even using his chainsaw.

Really, I keep questioning myself who finds PvP fun? All I am seeing is getting bodied over and over and over again by some dudes with thousands of hours of playtime in order to grind out some measly currency in the hope to get some better stuff for the future. This is pretty much the exact reason why I dropped War Thunder as quickly as I did.

[Toth]

Of course, after I complained here, we yesterday made our first escape. After a bit of a "chase bootcamp" where one of us played killer and the others tried to outrun them, we went into one open match of the day (though down one man and forced to take a randy with us). It was again the ski lodge of the Wesker duel, but this time we made it against The Nemesis. Of course I was the first on the hook again. I started out repairing a generator in a shack, then Nemesis dropped a zombie in one of the doors to block it and came in, I vaulted out of the window, around the shack and tried to reach the lodge to loose him there, but in the lobby he caught up and downed me.

The randy then, while chased by Nemesis, unhooked me, much to my dismay, only to get downed himself. I went back to where I was and fixed two generators while Nemesis tunneled the random and killed him, unfortunately. Your sacrifice will never be forgotten! In between my two generators I went into the lodge to search for another toolbox, but only found a medicine syringe and had to leave it behind when Nemesis came back and I had to hide in a corner.

Then just after I finished my second generator he spotted me again and this time I managed to get to the lodge and up the stairs, though it was also at time the others repaired the last generator and the exit gates were possible to be opened. I jumped off the first floor, with Nemesis apparently having given up on me and made a dash for the exit, where we made it. The entire trial only lasted 12 minutes.

[Fez]

Sadly, it appears that ZA/UM, the studio behind Disco Elysium is melting down. The studio itself still exists, but the artists collective (also named ZA/UM) behind it has formally dissolved today and none of the creatives behind the game have apparently been at the studio since last year. 

Ironically, the capitalists brought in to finance the game development have subsumed the whole endeavor and forced out everyone else. Basically a sequel to the game played out in real life.

[Poobah]

Yikes.

[KiDisaster]

It's been a banner year for replaying games over here with not many big new releases since the first few months of 2022. I started with the full Dragon Age trilogy back to front, which marked the first time I've revisited the second game since it came out. I was unbelievably disappointed by it at the time but my feelings on it were a lot more positive the second time around. The places where it's obvious how little development time they were afforded (thanks EA) still stick out like multiple sore thumbs, especially the third act, but overall I really enjoyed it this time. Inquisition is still way too fucking big but I'm more excited than ever for Dreadwolf now. Fingers crossed Bioware can pull this one off! 

I'm onto Breath of the Wild now thanks to the announcement hype from Tears of the Kingdom. Got it running at 4k60 this time (through extremely legal and legitimate means) and that game just shines every bit as much as it did five years ago. My fond memories of it had kind of glossed over some of the more annoying elements (inventory management, cooking being incredibly tedious, not being able to climb if it's raining etc.) but none of them really hamper the fact that it's a wonderful experience to sink into again. Easily remains among my top games of all time, and I can't wait for the sequel next year. 

Finally some new stuff I'm looking forward to over the next couple of months. Scorn and the Plague Tale sequel in October and then Dad of Boy 2 in November. Can't wait to murder more gods with the power of anger. 

[Inkdaub]

A few days ago I decided on a game buying mini-binge.

I bought...

Valkyrie Elysium

Skyrim

High Isle

Tomb Raider Trilogy...TR, Rise and Shadow.

Alan Wake

 

 

[Werthead]

On 10/3/2022 at 10:16 AM, Inkdaub said:

A few days ago I decided on a game buying mini-binge.

I bought...

Valkyrie Elysium

Skyrim

High Isle

Tomb Raider Trilogy...TR, Rise and Shadow.

Alan Wake

Alan Wake is a very solid game, as is the first "new" TR game. Need to play Rise, really.

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Alan Wake is a very solid game, as is the first "new" TR game. Need to play Rise, really.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is the high point in the Survivor trilogy in almost every way. 

[Fez]

CDPR Investor Relations out with some bold claims about future plans for the studio (it's a long twitter thread, no idea which ones will show up visible here when I paste the link below).

No doubt the timeline in the tweets will get shot to hell, but the announced projects are:

• A new trilogy of Witcher games that are a sequel to TW3 and developed in-house (supposedly 150 staff are working on the first one now)
• A new "innovative" Witcher game being developed by 2nd-party (?) studio The Molasses Flood (supposedly with 60 staff currently)
• A new Witcher game to be developed by an unannounced 3rd-party studio, seems like it might be a prequel game
• A sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 developed in-house, sounds like no work has happened yet
• A Cyberpunk 2077 expansion developed in-house (supposedly near completion and with 350 staff working on it)
• A new game set in a newly created 3rd IP for the studio (only a small conceptual team working on it currently)

The biggest news is confirmation of a 2077 sequel IMO.

 

[The Anti-Targ]

Been playing Gloomhaven for a few weeks now with a crew of 4. Enjoying it a lot, but can normally only manage one scenario a session before someone has to go to bed. Get occasional crashes even though I have a brand new PC with very decent specs. I wonder if something can be done to prevent the crashing. One of our crew is playing on an Apple laptop (!?!) and isn't getting the crashes, which is kind of embarrassing.

Waiting for Total War Warhammer III to go on special before I buy it. I want to encourage some family members who were into Warhammer Fantasy battle to get it and we can play campaign co-op. I will never be deft enough at controls on the fly to play competitive co-op.

I am well pleased with the HBO The Last of Us teaser, but that is only the cover of the book, so can't judge the whole thing just on that.

[Inkdaub]

On 10/4/2022 at 4:03 AM, Werthead said:

Alan Wake is a very solid game, as is the first "new" TR game. Need to play Rise, really.

I have always heard good things about Wake so I am looking forward to it.

On 10/4/2022 at 5:24 AM, IlyaP said:

Rise of the Tomb Raider is the high point in the Survivor trilogy in almost every way. 

If forced to pick one I would probably pick Rise, yeah. I prefer to cheat, though, and pretend they are one big game. Also, they would rate a place on my favorite console games list along with the Arkhams, Horizons and Control.

I still tear up thinking about reading a comment from someone at Square Enix or maybe it was Eidos...someone somewhere...saying they had no plans for further Tomb Raider games. I bought the 2013 game on a whim and really bonded with it.

On 10/4/2022 at 8:59 AM, Fez said:

A new trilogy of Witcher games that are a sequel to TW3 and developed in-house (supposedly 150 staff are working on the first one now)

This is happy news.

On 10/4/2022 at 8:59 AM, Fez said:

A new game set in a newly created 3rd IP for the studio (only a small conceptual team working on it currently)

I am cautiously interested and will remain so until I learn they are going to fuck it up, like they did Cyberpunk, by making it first person.

[Corvinus85]

In case anyone is interested in this remaster/remake.

 

[RumHam]

12 hours ago, Inkdaub said:

I am cautiously interested and will remain so until I learn they are going to fuck it up, like they did Cyberpunk, by making it first person.

I respectfully disagree with that last part. Some of us prefer first person.

I recently played GTA V for the first time since it's initial Xbox 360 version. I was excited about the idea of first person mode but the implementation was just like they put a camera on the third person guy's face. Moving was very bumpy. So I played through the story in 3rd person.

Yesterday I started Cyberpunk back up for the first time since I played a bit on the Xbox one and then GeforceNow. The difference in how it plays vs GTA is amazing. It would be so hard to go back

I get that third person can give you a better understanding of your surroundings, I just prefer navigating spaces the way I do in real life, to say nothing of aiming. 

[Argonath Diver]

Hey, don't forget us dinosaurs firmly rooted in 3rd person gaming forever. Isometric top down, platformers, pixel art, free camera look games unite! We don't need your 3rd millenia fancy pants immersion!

[Werthead]

5 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

Hey, don't forget us dinosaurs firmly rooted in 3rd person gaming forever. Isometric top down, platformers, pixel art, free camera look games unite! We don't need your 3rd millenia fancy pants immersion!

I started gaming in 1984 and two of the first games I ever played were Elite and Cholo. First-person FTW!

On a more serious note, the 3rd-person mods for Cyberpunk 2077 are good enough that I can't believe it would be too difficult to make a proper version or mode for the game itself, especially as the game has to render your character doing whatever the hell they're doing every time you hit photo mode.

[IlyaP]

On @Werthead's recommendation, I'm giving Mass Effect: Andromeda another try. I feel like I need a week long vacation to just get through everything this game has on offer, as there's just...so much. Of everything. 

[The Anti-Targ]

7 hours ago, IlyaP said:

On @Werthead's recommendation, I'm giving Mass Effect: Andromeda another try. I feel like I need a week long vacation to just get through everything this game has on offer, as there's just...so much. Of everything. 

I thought Andromeda was fine. But after finishing it once I never felt any urge to give it another playthrough, some elements just felt a bit too tedious for me to want to go through again for a story that I only found to be mildly interesting.