Videogames 2023: Dreams of the Sandbox Kings

[polishgenius]

Also announced:

Metroid Prime remaster (just the first one, but I've never played it, so cool. Immediate release). 
Fantasy Life sequel, which I'm curious about coz I liked the first quite a lot.
GB games for Nintendo Online, and GBA games for the expansion pass. I still have my GBA collection playable on my otherwise-busted DS, so I probably don't need the latter, but revisiting some game boy games will be cool. 


Couple of very Japanese detective games that both look quite interesting got trailers, too. DecaPolice, seems to be an open world thing with a 'you're in a simulation that's being hacked' premise, and Master Detective Archives: Rain Code (a more supernatural-type thing). 

 

And a bunch of other remasters and ports and stuff. 


All-in-all, a pretty strong Direct I'd say. 

[Raja]

On 2/7/2023 at 2:46 PM, Poobah said:

I won't be buying Hogwarts.

Same. Would feel dirty playing it.

[Corvinus85]

Tried Spellforce: Conquest of Eo, a turn-based strategy game set in the Spellforce universe but with the gameplay reminiscient of Age of Wonders. In fact, it feels very similar to AoW, since you play as a wizard who has a tower and a domain that you expand through conquest. I gave up on it and returned it, as I really didn't find anything special about it. 

[Ramsay B.]

On 2/7/2023 at 12:50 AM, IFR said:

I really want to play Hogwarts Legacy, the game looks absurdly fun. Sadly this semester has been so busy lately that I probably should wait until summer.

I at least look forward to reading the thoughts of those who do end up playing it.

I’ve only played a few hours so far but it’s been fun. I’ve spent most of my time just exploring Hogwarts. I recently found myself up at the Astronomy Tower and was watching students fly by on their brooms.

I’ve done a duel and you face some enemies in the tutorial part, and the combat seems decent. I was worried how it would be. There’s a lot of spells to learn in the future too, shit might get overwhelming at times. I’m playing on the PS5 and everything looks amazing also. 

[Caligula_K3]

GIVE ME NEW ZELDA. HOOK IT STRAIGHT INTO MY VEINS.

Other than that...

Metroid Prime is one of my favourite games of all time, and the remaster looks really incredible. I'd buy it right away, but I think I last re-played Metroid Prime only two years ago. For those of you who haven't played it before: get it. It's so good and has aged really well, gameplaywise, especially with this version offering both motion controls and dual stick.

Pikmin 4 looks fun, but I tried the Pikmin 3 demo and just couldn't get into it. I know many love Pikmin though, so I'm happy they finally get a sequel.

I would like to play Hogwarts Legacy. I understand why people are boycotting it; Rowling has turned into a shitty human being and her transphobic views are abhorrent. If this were a new book by her, I wouldn't buy it. But it's a game made by hundreds if not thousands of people that seems to be repudiating her views by allowing you to play a trans character and by having other trans characters. For me it's not the hill to die on when I already support lots of evil companies/people like Amazon/Jeff Bezos by watching stuff Rings of Power, and when there are video game companies like Activision/Blizzard with horrible practices towards employees that people buy games from. But I acknowledge that this may be a copout, and again, more power to people who want to boycott it.

[Toth]

15 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

Tried Spellforce: Conquest of Eo, a turn-based strategy game set in the Spellforce universe but with the gameplay reminiscient of Age of Wonders. In fact, it feels very similar to AoW, since you play as a wizard who has a tower and a domain that you expand through conquest. I gave up on it and returned it, as I really didn't find anything special about it. 

That said, I must really get back to the Spellforce main series. I played the first one ages ago when it appeared on a game magazine disc, only got into a fraction of the campaign, but it was a really fun combination of RPG and basebuilding strategy game.

 

Right now my own gaming these months is... erratic, to say the least. Some time ago I had a Star Wars fever and ended up finishing EA's Battlefront 2 even after I had some frustrations about endlessly respawning enemies and figuring out that blindly charging across the map often seems to be the encouraged playstyle. I then played Squadrons, which I also got as an Epic Games freebie... and while it has very fun gameplay, I must admit I also quite suck at it and it also very regularly crashes on me, which made the campaign more of a nuisance to play through.

Otherwise I kept on going with Dead by Daylight, despite it making me quite miserable and the endless streak of defeats with my game group never stopping. Last week I ended up snapping at them after three games in a row where all my attempts at coordinating us were utterly ignored and that was the last straw where I decided to... start with a break and eventually uninstall it, given that the last reason I still stuck to it is in danger of being turned on its head. I wanted to play something with others, but I don't want to fight with them about it. And sadly, DbD seems to be the only game they are interested in, with my attempts at getting them to try Vermintide as something actually cooperative failing. God, I just hate PvP so much...

I then had some fun playing Project Zomboid, but frustratingly... I never have enough time to seriously go ham on it and it's much too intense and punishing for briefly jumping in, with a too high likelihood of getting my carefully raised character killed.

So I wanted to play something relaxing. Tried out Project Hospital. Was quite astonished at how brief the campaign is, but it's a very fun hospital management game that somehow feels closer to Dr. House MD than Theme Hospital, especially when you hire cheap incompetent doctors who keep asking you to diagnose for them... which is just a brilliant way of somehow rewarding being a miser with more gameplay! XD

Then I somehow ended up installing Skyrim again. I... did play it quite a lot when it came out, but never got around to the Civil War quests or the addons and am not even sure whether I ever bothered finishing the main quest. But I recently got the anniversary edition in a sale and somehow it's... just far too perfect fit of mindless fun after a long stressful work day.

[felice]

5 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I would like to play Hogwarts Legacy. I understand why people are boycotting it; Rowling has turned into a shitty human being and her transphobic views are abhorrent. If this were a new book by her, I wouldn't buy it. But it's a game made by hundreds if not thousands of people

All the people who worked on it have already been paid. And I would hope they're not particularly proud of what they've produced. The more money it makes now, the more Rowling benefits, and she doesn't just have abhorrent views, she's actively promoting the persecution of a vulnerable minority - to me, that's worse than the more generic evil of Amazon etc. The game is also apparently extremely antisemitic. It's not like there's any shortage of other games to play...

[Corvinus85]

3 hours ago, Toth said:

That said, I must really get back to the Spellforce main series. I played the first one ages ago when it appeared on a game magazine disc, only got into a fraction of the campaign, but it was a really fun combination of RPG and basebuilding strategy game.

I don't think I played the first game, but definitely played the second years ago, and the 3rd when it came out a few years ago. I also bought its expansions but never completed them. Spellforce III is a beautiful looking game, but I find it exhausting to play because the RTS side is a bit too fast-paced for my taste. 

[Toth]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

I don't think I played the first game, but definitely played the second years ago, and the 3rd when it came out a few years ago. I also bought its expansions but never completed them. Spellforce III is a beautiful looking game, but I find it exhausting to play because the RTS side is a bit too fast-paced for my taste. 

Oh no, I'm not a fan of too fast RTS either. Well... I guess I'll see. The first game was massive in content and had pretty decent mechanics, but was unfortunately hampered by the utterly braindead AI that the developers tried to gloss over through absurd waves of enemy attacks. Some of the later campaigns were disgustingly difficult with the enemies rushing you from every direction the second you start setting up a camp.

[IlyaP]

21 hours ago, Raja said:

Same. Would feel dirty playing it.

Ditto. I won't be playing this either. 

[Rhom]

7 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Metroid Prime is one of my favourite games of all time, and the remaster looks really incredible. I'd buy it right away, but I think I last re-played Metroid Prime only two years ago. For those of you who haven't played it before: get it. It's so good and has aged really well, gameplaywise, especially with this version offering both motion controls and dual stick.

 

Its funny, within a couple of hours of the game being announced and released there was already a post on the Steam Deck subreddit of someone who had it up and running on his Deck.   

I had actually been considering getting the Prime trilogy running on my Deck a couple weeks ago.  There is a version of the Dolphin emulator for Wii that had been specifically crafted for the Deck to play the MP games.  They mapped all the motion controls and everything.  I always stand in awe of what modders are able to do.

[Werthead]

My plans to buy a new PC this year are being complicated by the fact that video game companies seem to have just all given up on optimisation. A whole string of games in a row have been released which are flat-out broken on PC, with apparently the order during development being to avoid late-stage optimisation as it's not worth it because the latest generation of PCs can just brute-force the problems or use DLSS. Which sounds great, but relatively few PC gamers have a DLSS-capable card (a huge number are still rocking 10** and 20** series cards because the 30** and 40** have been so ludicrously expensive) so they're just getting fucked over.

With that in mind, it means the sensible choice of getting a 4070ti (just out, and apparently brilliant performance on any game released before about 4 months ago but flaky on recent stuff) or waiting for the 4060, might no longer be really viable, since those cards might not be future-proofed at all. A 4090 might be the best option, but that is a truly staggering sum of money to consider expending.

[IFR]

8 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I would like to play Hogwarts Legacy. I understand why people are boycotting it; Rowling has turned into a shitty human being and her transphobic views are abhorrent. If this were a new book by her, I wouldn't buy it. But it's a game made by hundreds if not thousands of people that seems to be repudiating her views by allowing you to play a trans character and by having other trans characters. For me it's not the hill to die on when I already support lots of evil companies/people like Amazon/Jeff Bezos by watching stuff Rings of Power, and when there are video game companies like Activision/Blizzard with horrible practices towards employees that people buy games from. But I acknowledge that this may be a copout, and again, more power to people who want to boycott it.

It is the conundrum of ethical consumerism. Can we ethically watch shows from Disney or Apple, etc., when they are known for deeply immoral practices (such as catering to China, which I like to point out is still actively involved in a major genocide)? Another example - most people consume meat that is produced by subjecting animals to the most wretched conditions that living beings have ever had to endure, period. How can we participate in that, or be friends and colleagues with people who are knowingly complicit in such an atrocity?

Etc., etc. I suppose we each have to figure out where our respectively lines are. Like you, I certainly understand why someone would draw it here. But I don't feel especially guilty if my lines don't necessarily agree with others. I feel that judgement is easy to come off as hypocritical in this area since the requirements to achieve full purity in consumerism is tough to achieve.

[AndrewJ]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

My plans to buy a new PC this year are being complicated by the fact that video game companies seem to have just all given up on optimisation. A whole string of games in a row have been released which are flat-out broken on PC, with apparently the order during development being to avoid late-stage optimisation as it's not worth it because the latest generation of PCs can just brute-force the problems or use DLSS. Which sounds great, but relatively few PC gamers have a DLSS-capable card (a huge number are still rocking 10** and 20** series cards because the 30** and 40** have been so ludicrously expensive) so they're just getting fucked over.

With that in mind, it means the sensible choice of getting a 4070ti (just out, and apparently brilliant performance on any game released before about 4 months ago but flaky on recent stuff) or waiting for the 4060, might no longer be really viable, since those cards might not be future-proofed at all. A 4090 might be the best option, but that is a truly staggering sum of money to consider expending.

Join the dark side and get an XBox Series X. And no longer have to worry about that stuff. (Yeah, I know... hell would have to freeze over first).

 

[Rhom]

On 2/8/2023 at 6:00 PM, polishgenius said:

 

GB games for Nintendo Online, and GBA games for the expansion pass. I still have my GBA collection playable on my otherwise-busted DS, so I probably don't need the latter, but revisiting some game boy games will be cool. 

I downloaded the GBA collection out of curiosity… wow.  I don’t think it would be possible to be more underwhelmed.  Six games. Six. 

Something called Kururim Kururim
Super Mario Advance 4 (SMB3)
Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga
Mario Kart
Zelda Minish Cap
Wario Ware Inc

I don’t know what I expected… but that is pretty damn lame.  Even if they don’t want to/can’t have third party games; the least they could do would be to throw on Metroid Fusion.  (Return of Samus is included in the slightly less disappointing GB collection.)

I had a GBA and had a blast with the old Castlevania games and Golden Sun 1&2.  Considering how robust the NES and SNES collections are, this is pretty underwhelming.  

Edit:  You know what?  No.  Underwhelming doesn’t do it justice.  Considering the GBA comes with the “Expansion Tier,” this collection is downright insulting.

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

 (Return of Samus is included in the slightly less disappointing GB collection.)

It sucks they never ported the 3DS remake to switch. It runs well on the steam deck though. 

[mcbigski]

I'm just happy that I beat Into the Breach on Unfair level with the Secret Squad today.

Two island victory but since I found the Ice Generator in my first time pod it seemed like the time to go for the short win with them.  I find they are fine upgraded but lasting to get six power cores or so is quite difficult.

Still, getting stomped enough before this run has finally taught me the fine art of not quite killing off the wounded bottom tier Vek.  The spawn rate is somehow a function of how many are on the board at the end of a turn, so keeping that guy on the board that's going to burn to death in 2 turns anyway is usually way better than killing it off early and getting a fresh spawn that might even be a higher level.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, seriously go buy FTL and Into the Breach.  Subset Games has zero loot boxes, zero paid DLC, and for both of their titles sent out free expansions that add at least 50% to the play time.  And these aren't $60 retail to begin with.  If there's a better model I should be supporting, do tell.  

Also both of those games are fantastic, though I wouldn't play FTL on a mobile device.  It's very mouse or touch pad dependent.

[polishgenius]

2 hours ago, Rhom said:

I downloaded the GBA collection out of curiosity… wow.  I don’t think it would be possible to be more underwhelmed.  Six games. Six. 

Something called Kururim Kururim
Super Mario Advance 4 (SMB3)
Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga
Mario Kart
Zelda Minish Cap
Wario Ware Inc

I don’t know what I expected… but that is pretty damn lame.  Even if they don’t want to/can’t have third party games; the least they could do would be to throw on Metroid Fusion.  (Return of Samus is included in the slightly less disappointing GB collection.)

I had a GBA and had a blast with the old Castlevania games and Golden Sun 1&2.  Considering how robust the NES and SNES collections are, this is pretty underwhelming.  

Edit:  You know what?  No.  Underwhelming doesn’t do it justice.  Considering the GBA comes with the “Expansion Tier,” this collection is downright insulting.

 

 

I mean, it's irritating, but they've done this with all the collections; drip-released games. Fusion's announced, it'll be on there eventually, presumably later this year, as well as a few others. And they announced Golden Sun 1 but not 2, so there'll be further releases after that. It's not cool of them, but I wasn't really expecting anything else since the whole point is to encourage subscription. 

[karaddin]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

My plans to buy a new PC this year are being complicated by the fact that video game companies seem to have just all given up on optimisation. A whole string of games in a row have been released which are flat-out broken on PC, with apparently the order during development being to avoid late-stage optimisation as it's not worth it because the latest generation of PCs can just brute-force the problems or use DLSS. Which sounds great, but relatively few PC gamers have a DLSS-capable card (a huge number are still rocking 10** and 20** series cards because the 30** and 40** have been so ludicrously expensive) so they're just getting fucked over.

With that in mind, it means the sensible choice of getting a 4070ti (just out, and apparently brilliant performance on any game released before about 4 months ago but flaky on recent stuff) or waiting for the 4060, might no longer be really viable, since those cards might not be future-proofed at all. A 4090 might be the best option, but that is a truly staggering sum of money to consider expending.

Yeah the first thing I saw on this was a story about I think Forspoken and Returnal posting "Recommended" specs of 32GB RAM and it seems like a general trend much of the industry has suddenly decided on. Returnal is actually one I'm interested in playing.

I know its far from surprising that the meta issues with Hogwarts Legacy would colour my impression of it, but it also just hasn't looked interesting to me in the first place. I did read another piece on it earlier that compared it to much of the rest of the open world fare (Ubisoft formula etc) which would certainly fit with it generally not being to my tastes. I haven't played any of the ACs or FCs, I resent the open world elements in DA:I and ME:A, I'm OK with them in Cyberpunk 2077 but the only open world I've felt I genuinely enjoyed that aspect of is Elden Ring.

So hearing Hogwart's Legacy also has performance/lack of optimization issues on top of everything else is the cherry on top for absolutely positively ensuring I'm never touching it.

[Ran]

After much dithering, Linda and I got new computers. Last year was a very good one for us, so we decided to future-proof ourselves by... well, going pretty top of the line.

4K screens (although as main use case is video and graphics editing, we went with Dell Ultrasharps which have 60hz refresh rates and twice the contrast of other IPS screens), RTX 4090s (the MSI Suprim -- air cooled, not the liquid cooled version, and it takes awhile before the fans even spin up its heatsink is so beefy).

Inet (the best computer store in Sweden, IMO; they built our previous computers) convinced us to use AIOs for the 13700k CPU, and have to say we've been very happy with the performance so far in terms of keeping things quiet until the load is sustained for a few minutes, and even then I don’t think the fans crack 50%j. They also suggested 64 GB of RAM, after I figured 32 GB was enough, but they weren't wrong -- especially given the way games are going, I guess.

Done my first 4K, 60 FPS video edit and it was ridiculous how fast it was -- it feels no different from having edited 1080p on the old computers. And we've been playing with machine learning stuff, and lets just say that it goes a lot faster on a 4090 than it did using Google Colab and other such services.

As to gaming, I at this moment am too busy for it, but I did decide to try and see what I could manage with Cyberpunk 2077's benchmark. I can peg performance at 4k@60 fps with raytracing set to Psycho and almost everything at the highest setting (I used Digital Foundry's optimized setting guide to reduce a couple of things to medium/low where they said you can't really see any difference), provided I use DLSS Quality. Without DLSS, 30-35 FPS, which absolutely is playable but I'm not sure I can even see the difference in quality with DLSS on. Even Performance looks very good. And that's with the card undervolted and power limited to 80% (barely lose any FPS, reduce power usage, feels like a win-win). 

I am definitely ready for Phantom Liberty, whenever that comes along. I will probably leave CP2077 alone until that's released.

(Suffice it  to say, I have cancelled my GeForce Now subscription. )