Japanese Drift Master seems interesting. I enjoy open world racing games ever since I fell in love with Test Drive Unlimited back in the days, but I can’t vibe with Forza Horizon because of the constant “Congratulations, you just drove 5 meters in this direction! Take this awesome car for free!” wherever you go. It completely robs me of the enjoyment of progressing through the game.

Wishlisted it, I’ll probably buy it as soon as I have some free time.

3 in the ideal situation, requires the user to have played like i dont remember, 10 different games.

Or watch a 30-minute recap.

I trust these people with every cell of my body.

This is wonderful advice! Thank you, John Xbox! I may be without a job, but I will keep on using your products like the mindless consumer I am, so that your paychecks will keep on growing.

God, this is so out of touch that it stops being funny and becomes genuinely uncanny. Like, are these people even real? Are they robots piloted by Skynet? Am I the only real person on the entire planet?

This is top quality journalism offered for free. We don’t deserve you.

Don Mattrick left Xbox in 2013. It was more than a decade ago. He may have ruined the XOne launch, but Spencer has had all the time and money in the world to rectify his mistakes and, so far, has only worsened them to the point that most doubt that a new Xbox will exist at all. Nintendo was on the brink of disaster after the Wii U, and managed to turn their fates around in half the time and with a fraction of the money. Why couldn’t Spencer?

In all these years, Spencer’s legacy has been of failed deals, shutting down/letting go multiple studios, and moronic attempts at building AAA and GAAS games on the back of seasonal contractors. We should stop blaming Mattrick for things that happened a decade after he left the company.

I swear this is not me doomering (I very much support this campaign and even signed it myself half a year ago), but I strongly suspect that at least a good chunk of those are fake. The issue is very hot in “terminally online” circles and those are the kind of people who don’t really think things through before acting.

I hope the number will keep on growing until the “legit” votes make up for the fake ones.

I’m pretty sure that, in this specific case, the delay was mandated by the game’s publisher, Sony. I doubt the Series S has anything to do with it.

Considering that it skipped the last showcase despite reportedly releasing next year, I don’t have high hopes for that one.

Wouldn’t be surprised if it was built on the backs of seasonal contractors. Seems like that’s the strategy they have chosen for their other big IPs as well (Forza Motorsport 8 and Halo Infinite).

It’s incredible that the clowns in charge of the gaming division and responsible for dragging it through the mud for all these years get to keep their job and will probably see an increase in their salaries as well, while the people that lost their jobs because of their incompetence will get nothing but a sad press release from Uncle Phil the HR department.

News of Everwild’s cancellation arrives amid more layoffs at Microsoft; the company is reportedly slashing nearly 9,000 jobs as part of new cuts at Microsoft.

Wow. It was rumored to be a big layoff, but 9,000 is way over any forecast. And this is what? The third so far since Covid? Is there anyone left working for them, at this point? Or is it all seasonal contractors?

EDIT: turns out that they gutted The Initiative (the supposedly AAAA studio that never released anything), cancelled Everwild, cut 50% of Turn10, 10% of King, and cancelled an unknown number of unannounced games, including one MMO title developed by the TES Online devs.
What a bloodbath. But hey, at least Phil is safe.

The problem at this point is not so much that they don’t have games - they have released plenty in the past few years and most have been received positively.

The problem is that they released those games too late, and by that point, the ship had already sailed. After a streak of disappointing years with the XOne, they needed strong titles to pair up with XSeries. Instead, they released jack shit for an entire year, and after that the disappointment just grew further with the likes of Halo Infinite, Starfield and the weird vampire game nobody asked for.

By that point, everyone already got themselves a PS5, a Switch, a gaming PC or a handheld device. Xbox needed to show their fans they believed in their mission and were capable of delivering strong titles on their platform, but everyone saw their releases and said “Meh”.

The strong titles eventually came, but by that point they had already decided to port them over to the competition to offset the cost, and everyone saw the writing was on the wall for the platform.

Spencer can go on stage spewing whatever bullshit he wants, but nobody outside of the most diehard Xbox fans believe that the platform has a future - and it’s very hard to convince people to invest on your platform when it’s not certain how many more years it will be supported, and whether your store will remain accessible or shut down a few years down the line.

Thank you for another post! Whenever the next one comes, I’ll be there to read it. Wish you the best!

Unfortunately, that’s not my area of expertise. I don’t follow streamers or YouTubers (Italian or international), nor do I have a close enough relationship with any of them that I’d be able to talk to them and convince them to mention this petition to their fans.

The one and only time some friends and I attempted to interact with a few local content creators (to publicize our free fan games we poured hundreds of hours into and NEVER attempted to monetize in any way), we either got ignored, insulted, or received vague answers that went nowhere. It soured me towards Italian content creators and vowed to never interact with them again.

It saddens me that my country (Italy) has such a low percentage of signatures. Most of us are either ignorant of anything happening outside of our borders, or straight up doomers who don’t believe anything can ever change for the better.

Big congrats to my fellow northern cousins. I was expecting Poland, who has a healthy videogame industry, to gather a good enough number of signatures, but 160% is wild! It’s refreshing seeing so many people joining the petition - It’s not even about videogames: this initiative will have huge repercussions on the lifespan of other, unrelated products and, in general terms, planned obsolescence.

Why, yes, I’m broke, but I doubt Stellar Blade has anything to do with it. It’s mostly because of the shifting economic and political landscape of today.

Thanks for asking, though!

To be honest that would just be the end of the consoles system as there is a reason Sony is selling the PS5 for so cheap.

They stopped selling them for cheap as soon as they reached market dominance, so good riddance I say.

I’m also not sure how much the PS exerience differs from Xbox, but my last console was an XOne (got it for cheap) specifically because I wanted the “no fuss” experience, and it was such a headache that it convinced me to switch to PC instead.

Skyscrapers at night are always a sight, but they especially shine in pixel art! There’s something weirdly retro-futuristic in those pictures.

I don’t play MH, so take my words with a grain of salt, but a friend of mine told me that they were hoping for more frequent and robust title updates to keep the game fresh.

According to them, there’s just not enough end game content for the game to remain interesting in the long run, and that’s on top of a gameplay loop far less rewarding/challenging than previous titles.

Congrats on your 20th post! Now onto adding a 0 to that number! :P

What have you been playing?

I’ve recently finished Resident Evil 2 Remake for the first time. I’m a longtime RE fan (the original trilogy being one of the earliest gaming memories that I have), and the remake of the first title is one of my favourite games ever, so I was kind of curious to see how the second one would be.

I’ve never been more torn on a game. The moment-to-moment gameplay is great! The environment is greatly improved from the original, the creatures design is awesome, the horror aspect has been done well, and it mostly doesn’t overstay its welcome. I can see why people enjoyed it so much when it was released.

As a remake, it fails spectacularly. The story makes no sense, the writing is abysmal and made me hate most of the characters. And of course there’s that thin-veiled misogyny that’s become (unfortunately) fairly common in most recent entries of the franchise. It’s a sad day when a game from the 90s can boast being more progressive than its counterpart from 2019…

Ha! I heard of this one, but haven’t been able to try it yet. As a huge fan of old school RE games, it piqued my interest. Thank you for reminding me of it. I shall pick it up as soon as I have some free time.

I’ll also mention another, even lesser known title: Kabus 22. It’s an old Turkish videogame that’s clearly inspired by classic RE titles. Not very good, but I have a soft spot for games that were developed with more love than knowledge on game design. Also the developer is a really nice dude who re-released the game for free as a thank you to the fans who reached out to him, and that’s such a sick move that I can’t help but have a lot of respect for him.

There’s a good retrospective in YT about the game here, if anyone’s curious.

And Crawford is an incompetent smartass. I honestly don’t know what any TTRPG would have to gain from including him in the team.

If they hope to chase 5e’s success by following in its footsteps - piss poor adventure modules, nonexistent DM support, unbalanced player options, and a game designer that contradicts himself on Twitter every other post while attempting to explain why he isn’t wrong - then good luck to them, I guess.

I very much doubt that 5e became the juggernaut that it’s now because of Crawford. If anything, it’s despite of him - mostly because of the free publicity granted by things like Critical Role and Stranger Things, and DnD being the default option for anyone who develops an interest in roleplaying for the first time.

I’m very sorry to hear about your situation! I wish you a quick recovery. Your posts are my favourite part of this community, so thank you very much for taking your time to ramble with us for a bit :)

The bestest deal in gaming!

Wasn’t expecting another one, considering how the last one ended.

But hey, I loved the first two games, I’m ready to cry in this one as well.

Björn Ruther has worked on this as mo-cup supervisor and historical advisor, so I’m kinda curious to see the end product! (Pseudo-)Historical accurate medieval games are hard to come by, surprisingly.

I had this on my wishlist for a while. Art style is really nice. I’ll wait and see if the horror component is good as well.

Tentatively curious.

What was shown of the hotel reminds me of REVII. I’m not sure how it ties to Raccoon, aside from the fact that the protagonist is the daughter of a character from Outbreak, but Raccoon City post-nuke is an interesting setting to explore — and regular zombies seem to be a returning enemy? I’m not sure if they are planning to have flashback sequences during the outbreak, or if the zombies will make an appearance in the present day timeline).

Happy to see a new MC. Ethan was okay-ish but painfully bland, I hope she’ll be more interesting.

“It’s real xD” at the end referencing the first and second delay announcements cracks me up.

Hey, don’t worry, it’s not your fault. I love your posts, thanks a lot for another great one!

I don’t know if it’s just me, but formatting after the Deck Cube title gets wonky.

EDIT: NVM, I think it’s my app (Summit). Firefox displays the page correctly.

What was so bad about it? Was it worse than other F2P MMOs?

What have you been playing?!

Talos Principle 2. I bought it 5 months ago but only recently I’ve been able to actually play it.

The first game was a near 10/10 experience for me, so I came in with very high expectations, and… At the moment, I’m a bit disappointed.
The main drawback is how pointlessly big everything is. You spend minutes running from puzzle to puzzle, especially if you want to 100% the game, which requires a lot of wandering around to find hidden switches and light rods to solve the Sphynx’s puzzles.
The environment is gorgeous, mind you, but it’s just… too much. Which is funny, because an NPC I talked to yesterday lamented the exact same thing: '“bigger doesn’t equal more beautiful”. I agree, Jeremy.

That being said, it’s still a fun game, and the story is interesting (although a lot more heavy-handed than the first game). There are also a lot of cats! And you can pet some of them! I also found a little fox running around. I couldn’t pet it, but it was cute regardless.

But seriously, this game is soothing for the soul. There’s just something in strolling around taking in the view with a beautiful soundtrack in the background that is just soooo relaxing. I use it as a way to cool my head after a day’s work before going to bed.

Half the things those idiots like would be ‘woke’ if they came out today. Any movie/videogame/(I would include books but these chuds don’t read) including a female lead, a non-white person, or a disabled individual is doing virtue signalling and pandering to minorities. But back then, chuds didn’t have the internet to tell them what to hate.

There are tons of things that nobody cared about years ago that wouldn’t fly today. Fairy Oddparents having a male individual become pregnant. LOTR’s Éowyn killing the witch king on her own. Avatar: TLA has a few ‘woke’ episodes as well - for example, one where the male leads learns how to fight from a woman, and another where the female lead needs to convince a male wizard to teach her magic, which was a man-only practice.

If they were released today, you’d find them in thumbnails on YT with “cringe”, “woke” or “DEI” written in CAPS all over the place.

Woke did not exist before 2015, so everything created before that year is, in fact, absolutely based. Including all those apolitical masterpieces I grew up with, such as Metal Gear Solid and Bioshock. I wish they still made fun games instead of insisting on shoving leftist commentary down out throats. I really want to enjoy gaming again but developers are woke leftists now :(

Lucky for us, the glorious Nippon country is untouched by woke. No, I don’t know Japan and I’ve never visited it, but i play a lot of VNs, which is basically the same thing.

EDIT: In case it wasn’t clear… /s

Tank controls truly are divisive. I grew up playing the PS1 RE games and, to me, they are just second nature. I recommended a friend of mine to try them out, and he walked away after a few minutes lol

Have you tried Dino Crisis 2? Of all the tank controls games, it’s the one with the most fluid gameplay. The story is completely bonkers, but the gameplay is so satisfying.

By the way, thank you for recommending Crow Country! I had never heard of it and now I’m very interested.

I wonder if any of the original devs were involved with this release. In any case, saving a game from eternal oblivion after all those years deserves praise!

I urge anyone who has not played Crosscode to give it a try. I randomly played it during the pandemic, and I’ve since not been able to enjoy gaming the way I did it before. For me, it was very close to being a 10/10.

The new owner seems to have a few gaming brands already, Game Rant

Isn’t GameRant, like, 90% AI-generated clickbait content nowadays? Can’t talk about what they were about a few years ago, but every time I find a GR article when looking for something, it’s clickbait AI slop. Like “When will the sequel to X release? Everything you need to know” (scroll down to read post) “there’s no confirmation about a sequel”.

As someone who loves JRPGs as a genre but has generally grown out of their anime phase, Expedition 33 looks really interesting. I’ve been eyeing it since the announcement trailer and its recent success got me curious. A co-worker told me that it’s just 20-30 hours to beat, which is a huge plus for me (don’t have the patience to clear 100-200 hrs games anymore - looking at you, Persona 5).

I’ll probably get it this summer as soon as I manage to get some free time from work.

I don’t know if you’re asking sarcastically or not, but I’d mention Divinity 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, Witcher 3, and those are just the most popular/universally acclaimed. I feel all three of them offer the same sense of adventure and exploration in an open world map, with actually interesting side content, engaging combat system, and voice acting that doesn’t scream “we’re being held in the recording room against our will, please save us”. They are also relatively bug-free, or at least not broken the way Bethesda titles are.

Back in the days, I think Gothic had the same clunky gameplay but at least offered a much deeper worldbuilding and more interesting choices.

You can also widen the search by changing the parameters. The thing that sets Oblivion apart is that it attempted to do a lot of things, but everything is either shallow, poorly executed, or outright bugged. If you take a look at other titles that did some of the things Oblivion did, there are countless that executed those ideas a lot better. Fable 2, Dragon Age, Avowed for example, and again, I’m only mentioning the most famous ones.