Between this update, the new Digimon Story game and LumenTale, looks like this year will be packed for monster collector enthusiasts.
And Pokémon, I guess, but I lost interest in that franchise years ago.
The answer to that question depends on your tastes, your current situation (amount of free time, mood, etc…) and many more. There’s no such thing as the “best” when it comes to a subjective piece of media.
I can’t even decide on my favourite game, because what I like and what I want to play depends on the aforementioned factors. I may be interested in a strong narrative today, on puzzles tomorrow, and on a crazy platformer game next. Different games resonate with me differently depending on when I play them.
Games that really stayed with me are (in no particular order) Xenogears, Metal Gear Solid, CrossCode, Digimon World, Oddworld Abe’s Odyssey, Ace Combat 4-6, The Talos Principle, Ori and the Blind Forest, Threads of Fate, and I also spent a crazy amount of hours on Stronghold, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin and Medieval II Total War. There’s, like, at least half a dozen different genres in that list and all those games are very different from one another, but all had different qualities that resonated with me for one reason or the other.
I don’t think I agree. I feel like the game is so short and incomplete that you can see everything it has to offer by playing it for 10 minutes - or watching a YT gameplay.
The game has one map, no collisions, no AI. I think I remember it having different playable “rigs” but they are mechanically the same, so there’s no point.
At least with a game like Oblivion you could play it for 20 years and still find new ones. Big Rigs doesn’t have near the same “energy”.
Fun fact, Ace Combat 5 has a similar “going at ludicrous speed” bug (We have to go faster, We have to go even faster), but it also has an entire (actually good) playable game attached to it.
Quite the big step for gaming rights in the EU. In the last page, the document also mentions “whales” as “vulnerable people”, adding that a game targeting them specifically may run afoul of EU legislation when precaution are not taken to protect them from their impulses.
This may have a gigantic ripple effect in the industry – or it may not, if the industry decides that targeting whales in the US and China is more profitable than bowing to the EU.
About the GoG store’s second class treatment: it’s always worth it to email the publisher and ask them if they plan on updating their game on GoG!
I did exactly that a few months ago when I wanted to buy I was a teenage exocolonist - emailed Finji and let them know that their game was not up to date on the platform I wanted to buy the game on. They replied rather quickly and the game was updated a few days later. It was very nice because the game was on sale and, thanks to their quick reply, I was able to not miss the sale.
AI techbros will have you believe that you can solve world hunger, cure cancer, and colonize Mars with a few prompts on ChatGPT.
Yet their AI is still incapable of answering two prompts consecutively without making shit up, or drawing a human without turning it into an eldritch abomination.
Game preservation could be fixed with open source emulators and fixing copyright laws so that I’m allowed to download a game nobody has profited from in two decades, but that’s not appealing to big corporations.
Mildly surprised to see another installment in this series after all these years, but I’m pretty excited.
For those who don’t know, Styx is a AA stealth game where you play as a goblin assassin (the titular Styx). It spawned as a spin off of another fantasy game (Of orcs and men) where you played as both the goblin and an orc warrior, which was unfortunately a bit too janky for my tastes.
The focus on stealth of the following installments really benefitted the series, imo. While they still carry a bit of janky-ness (as many AA titles do), they are nevertheless a lot of fun! The story in the first one was very good as well. I still haven’t finished the second one, so I can’t comment much on it.
The first two games are also currently discounted on Steam and GoG ($2 for the first one and $3 for the second), and I think they are very much worth that much.
If you kind of liked the XIII games, I highly recommend Lighting Returns. Time limits make me deeply anxious but that game’s timer is VERY generous, especially because you can stop time pretty much forever. I 100% my first run in, like, four days out of thirteen.
The story is wacky as hell (I honestly didn’t care much after XIII-2), but gameplay’s solid and exploration is fun.
As for the last question, I think that they should go back to their roots. They pivoted away from the JRPG genre with each title, but recent successes from similar games (such as Persona 5 in the AAA department, and Sea of Stars in the indie category) proved that people still crave a more traditional turn-based system.
I really enjoyed Tunic for the same reason as you! It has nice and cozy vibes but manages to challenge the player without ever feeling too cheap or overwhelmingly difficult, in both combat and puzzles. I really was reminded of old-school gaming, in a good way.
The only thing I disliked is how cryptic the last few puzzles were, to the point that I doubt the vast percentage of the player base would be able to figure them out without resorting to a guide. I certainly wasn’t. I love puzzle games and I love games like Talos Principle and Crosscode. I guess I just didn’t like how meta-gamey some of the solutions (and the reward for the puzzles) were.
PS. Another great post and the formatting is excellent. Congrats!
As a fellow enthusiast with an obsessive-compulsive drive to write about my hobbies (not necessarily video-game related, but quite similar) i know that these things take a while to write, especially when you take the time to format everything correctly, link the sources, etc.
So I wanted to echo the others here and say that I really appreciate your work here. It was a fun way to start my day, and I’m looking forward to your next post :)
Sony has stopped releasing games on GoG ever since they required login to the PSN. For example, you can buy God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn on GoG, but you can’t buy Ragnarok or Forbidden West.
They lifted the requirement a few weeks ago, but the games still have not been released on GoG, and at this point it’s doubtful they will.
It did. It’s also on Switch and on Windows/Xbox as a Play Anywhere title on MS Store (buy once, get to play on both platforms). But from what I remember, FFIX was the one that needed the remaster treatment the least, as it plays fairly well on any emulator. FFVII and FFVIII, on the other hand, get more bearable with the built-in speed up button (which, yes, you can do on an emulator as well, but then the music gets sped up too and it gets annoying).
I was hoping for this after the Resident Evil bundle from a few months ago.
The way Dino Crisis 2 managed to turn the tankiness of the RE/Dino Crisis gameplay into an action-packed shooter is stunning to me and I love that game dearly. Replayed it last year and it holds up surprisingly well!
Now let’s hope for a Pararisite Eve GOG release! :D
I honestly just think that most people have bad text analysis skills/lack of proper reading comprehension. The book is told by the perspective of a specific character, and that character says “the sky is green”, so people believe it because they can’t detach the POV from what they are reading. It happens every time, such as people believing that the Space Marines are the good guys, or that the fascist dictatorship in Starship Trooper isn’t that bad after all.
The movies whitewashed a lot of bad stuff, and I still felt creeped out by them when I was a kid. I’m happy that some people is finally coming around to understanding it now that JKR is more vocal of her outlandish political views.
Not much to say but this is the usual comment to thank you for your wonderful posts.
Enjoy Rome! Be sure to try our Carbonara at some point! :P