Both DLCs are worth playing in my opinion. I think the first two Night Springs episodes are pretty weak, but the third one is great (at least if you’ve played the Remedy back catalogue - including Quantum Break) and the Lake House is just stellar.

HGSS is peak Pokémon.

Let’s see what kind of unbelievable powecreep they come up with to upstage Urshifu and the horses.

Lake House DLC was amazing, both a super tight horror chapter and a nicely written thinly veiled commentary on AI art.

Fair enough. And 566.36 is a great driver, it’s very fast and stable but to anyone who uses DLSS I think Preset K is too valuable.

I’m pretty sure there is a later stable one than that. I’ve been on 591.44 for a while without issues. 566.36 doesn’t have Preset K on DLSS right?

Thank you, Nordic Souls does look pretty great. I’ll jot that down for the future!

I know the Wabbajack scene is pretty big for Skyrim, is there any big mod pack you would recommend? Skyrim is also an embarrassing blind spot for me (played enough of Morrowind and Oblivion back in the day so never got around to it) but after all the hundreds of hours I’ve spent modding Fallout: NV, Cyberpunk and STALKER Anomaly I am not sure I want to dive headfirst into another multi month mod project.

Oh right, haha! Well, I hope your confidence in me wasn’t misguided! I am having a great time with it at least.

The modding scene in general is really good. The only shame is that so many old classic mods got broken by the 2.0 update.

I hope you’ll enjoy Chrono Ark, I’m having a really good time with it! The JRPG/party based concept merged with roguelike deckbuilder feels really good and I really like the boss designs, each with unique gimmicks. I’m surprised it isn’t a bigger title with more recognition.

I would probably say Withering Rooms. I’ve been super interested in it since it released but have managed to restrain myself to wait for a deep(er) sale.

Chrono Ark

I’m at the true final boss, but got wiped. Felt a little deflating as the fake final boss was a super hype fight with awesome cinematic mechanics and presentation and I was all set to see the credits roll, only to stumble at the finish line. This is the downside of having a large story focus on your roguelike deckbuilder, I felt ready to see the (first) ending and now I just felt a wave of frustration. I need to take a break for a few days to reset and then come back with a better build, now that I now what the true final boss demands mechanically.

Ninja Gaiden

Been playing more of NG4 and NG2 Black. I keep going back and forth between them, and I can’t shake the feeling that NG4 is a great action game, but I wish it had more Ninja Gaiden in it rather than more Platinum Games in it. Also I hate the fact that NG4 is checkpoint autosave only and you never now when the last time you saved was, so you just kind of have to guess. I can’t understand why it didn’t use save statues like the previous games.

Rise of the Ronin

A comment on here last week got me interested enough to acquire this from Fitgirl to try it out. I’ve been somewhat curious before as I do like Team Ninja and have heard good things about the combat, despite the otherwise mixed reception. But after reading about it on here I suddenly felt the Open World Slop urge hit me out of nowhere. This far though I’ve only gotten so far as to halfway finish designing my characters in the very extensive character creator…

The timing with Fluxer is very fortuitous, it’s been in development for years but only just got public which is why it seems to have come out of nowhere. I am with you on the money bit, but it comes down to how it gets used. I haven’t looked into how transparent the finances are. I understand the need to rustle up money fast in order to scale up development, as a proper Discord competitor needs to be more than a one-man effort. So I’m hoping that’s what the money will go to.

I agree that Fluxer is by far the best alternative yet, so I want to be hopeful.

Great writeup from my favourite video game journalist. Maybe one day I’ll actually play EarthBound, I kind of missed the boat on it back in the day.

I haven’t played myself because I don’t have friends to play with but maybe something like PEAK or Abiotic Factor?

I’ve had Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning on my wishlist for a while and it’s basically been described to me as playing as lot like an “offline MMO” of the WoW/FFXIV style.

I was moreso talking about the future of gaming monetisation.

Paying for a game you don’t own, only to have to rent the gameplay inside the thing you don’t even own to begin with. Presumably all content also being locked on company servers meaning it will get EOL’d and inaccessible at some point in the future.

Immaculate.

It’s the best game of all time, I think. Nothing else in gaming has ever moved me like the awful phonecall or the final dream.

I am so excited for this, I really hope it delivers.

That’s great to hear. I don’t mind a hard challenge now and then, but it’s also nice to just have an easygoing narrative and more cinematic experience in between so you don’t get exhausted.

If you want another roguelike deckbuilder addiction to substitute (or tide you over until StS 2 drops) I can’t recommend Chrono Ark enough.

Sounds good to me! Is it difficult or just a “going along with the ride” type of experience? Trying to get a feel for when to schedule it in.

Patent trolls are absolute scum of the earth.

How are you liking A Plague Tale? I have it on my docket for sometime this year.

Chrono Ark

I’m at the “end” of the story. I have one more run to get the first ending, and then an uncertain amount of optional grind to get the true ending. I will probably reserve my final thoughts for when I see the endings, but overall this game has been fantastic. Regardless of what you think of the story I’d say the gameplay is solid enough to be worth giving it a shot if you enjoy the genre, and if the story interests you then that is just a cherry on top. Despite not really being that into anime I found myself enjoying several of the characters and getting pretty interested in the plot once it got going, and I’m intrigued to see how it closes out. Mechanically I think it’s just really great, with both solid core gameplay and some really fun and interesting boss designs.

Ninja Gaiden 4

I haven’t played a whole lot this week, but I finished another chapter. Still very early on in the game. It’s very good. I have some issues with it (and it’s one of the most egregious offenders of “yellow paint” in recent years) but overall it’s a great Character Action Game. In some ways it feels more like a cousin to the earlier entries than a core family member - removal of specific combo strings combined with addition of parrying and stance switching has altered the DNA quite a bit. That being said it’s fantastic in its own way and really fun and fluid. Plus the bosses are actually good in this game (so far), which is… not really something you can say about previous games.

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black

The fantastic “White” mod is about to get a huge update with more or less 1:1 recreated spawns of the original NG2, and at the same time a Modified Moveset Mod released, so I had to to back and play some of the best chapters. NG2 combat still is really something special, and the moveset mod really makes it even better.

Totally agree with you about the Alan/Saga stories: Saga’s side is a very competent survival horror with great gameplay, but Alan’s side is just so brilliant - especially the reality re-writing with scenes and light shifts.

Also surprised this was the first time you watched the short film!

Huh, had no idea that game existed but that does look pretty different from what we usually see.

I’m glad to hear it’s in a good spot, at least. I will always have a soft spot for EVE and how unique it is, and all the emergent stories and player-driven action it creates. So I want it to thrive again.

For me though, I am not sure I have another EVE stint in me. It’s not so much a game as it is a hobby, and I am content these days with being able to actually play and finish concrete narrative games that have a beginning and end, you know?

Plus the social aspect of getting to know new people is daunting, and my old crew has all quit and disbanded sadly. Large wars are always fun though, and I do miss gatecrashing battles and doing bombing runs…

Well no, I’m mostly interested in games with a side of romance. I would expect to be able to hold actual romance games and visual novels etc to a higher standard. Though actually it would be interesting to compare the best romance game/visual novel romance to the best “video game romance”.

This brings me to an interesting question, only briefly touched upon in the article (and with too few examples): which is the best video game romance so far?

Yes. If you can play it maxed out it’s one of the best looking games ever, still. Hell, even on medium settings it will look good. Not only a phenomenal graphics engine with great ray tracing and visual fidelity but also a superb HDR implementation. And on top of all that the art direction is absolutely top shelf stuff.

Plus, of course, one of the best narrative experiences ever while simultaneously playing like a really tight and solid survival horror.

It’s in my top 3 games of all time.

How is it, these days? Playerbase healthy? Game balance any better lately? It went downhill for a few years after the change of ownership, but I haven’t been plugged in for a few years now.

I’m pretty sure OD Diner is meant to be both. Doesn’t it say Alan has “various addictions under his belt” in one of the manuscript pages somewhere?

Chrono Ark

I’m decently deep into it now, and I keep enjoying it immensely. The only unfortunate thing about it (depending on how you look at it) is that it’s really rather long. I had for some reason thought this could be a medium-length game I could get through in a reasonable time frame and feel good about finishing. Instead it’s probably something of a 100-hour affair if you want the true ending - which is on par for the JRPG influences I suppose. I am also in finding that each run being around 3 hours in total is maybe a tad long: if you ever fail against the end boss it’s easy to get frustrated as you need to beat it every time in order to progress the story. And the story is quite important to the game, while the meta progression (which happens even on failed runs) is rather limited. So it can sometimes feel like you wasted 3 hours if you experimented with a new team and didn’t get there.

In the end though, this is more telling of the fact that the story is actually quite interesting, since the frustration is more stemming from the fact that I want to progress further in it and get impatient at a failed run. Otherwise not much to say about gameplay, it’s a really solid and fun roguelike deckbuilder. Every character is very well designed and unique, there are many combos and synergies and there is a lot of variety in every run with various unlocks, card upgrades and so on. If you like the genre, you would love this. Really can’t recommend it enough.

Ninja Gaiden 4

Played a couple of chapters so far, still on the Hard difficulty. Really liking the bosses so far, this has previously been a weak point in the series but have delivered here so far. I am pushing myself a bit playing on Hard, but I have been able to manage it thus far. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of adding parrying and deflecting to a Ninja Gaiden game, but it really does make the bosses a lot more fun.

The general combat (outside of bosses) feels really good, but it’s still somewhat weird to not have fighting game style specific strings to work with, and I don’t know how to feel about that. On the one hand it’s much more dynamic and free flowing than ever, but I still miss memorising specific strings like “okay, XX->XY with the dual katanas is a guaranteed decapitation against humanoids, I’ll use it here” etc.

Overall though it’s the best Character Action Game in years and if you like the genre you should definitely play it.

Aren’t inflation-adjusted prices for video games quite low, comparatively? Charts like this comes up in a quick search: https://infographicsite.com/infographic/console-game-prices-inflation-adjusted/

Had no idea this existed. Saving your comment for the future, and that idea sounds kind of fun. If I could get over the anxiety of playing with strangers, at least.

Why take a risk on new IPs when you can milk existing ones for guaranteed profits? That’s just basic capitalism. Speaking of, I wonder if we’re due for another Last Of Us remake soon.

The reason no other alternative has taken off is that there is no other alternative. I hate Discord too, but there just isn’t a drop-in replacement.