That’s pretty much my approach as well - finding and figuring out stuff on my own is way more fun.

Didn’t have a chance to play Kingdom Come yet but what I’ve seen and heard makes me optimistic about doing so. The second game is apparently twice as large so here’s hoping your wish comes true on the quality of the experience.

Lets hope the slowly expanding union movement within the industry reaches more countries in the future (yes, I’m aware this isn’t a game dev only problem in Indonesia but hey, change needs to start somwhere).

Hmm, considering it already reminded me of the second game (not bad but I did prefer the original, even if it was “worse”) I’ll probably skip this one. Thanks!

They are starting with a “smaller” scale and seem to have a decent enough plan for early access so I hope they’ll take the time to make something worthwhile. We can only hope for now.

I enjoy the feeling that the game is doing it’s own thing when I’m not looking!

There’s that but I also really like the sheer scale of the environments. It’s the only game I’ve played where the world feels like a world thanks to the lack of compression used in other games (in general, not just TES titles). I understand why this isn’t a popular approach, especially nowadays, but it’s definitely something that makes the place feel more real - even without the detail and visual effects of modern games.

Ahh, I see. How is it (in general, as a mascot platformer)?

It can be difficult to get into if you approach it like a modern TES title, that’s for sure. It lacks a lot of quality of life features or unique content compared to the sequels, requiring more imagination and active engagement to make your own fun. That said, if you can overcome these issues it can be a pretty immersive experience. Also, while it’s not as popular as Skyrim, there are a few quest mods available to make things more interesting when you feel the repetition starts kicking in.

I don’t expect to finish the main story nor do I plan to play it every single day for months. It’ll most likely become a game I come back to every few months, when I want to jump back into the medieval life of my current character and play until I get bored again.

Kao the Kangaroo

Which one, original or the reboot?

Thank’s for that! I didn’t know about the project during the Kickstarter phase and at this point I might as well wait and see how the early access turns out (my PC is already on its last legs and it’s made with UE5 which has its issues).

I don’t really have any expectations towards TES6 to be honest - not because it will be bad (I’m sure there will be plenty of people happy with the game) but simply because each sequel moves further away from what I find interesting (less of a “living world” and more of a “theme-park”). Best I can do for now is to play Daggerfall and work on my own small project which will hopefully fulfill some of my needs.

Started playing Daggerfall again. It’s a fresh start, my second… I wanted to call it attempt but I don’t think that’s the right word considering I never intended to finish the game - I treat it more as a world to live in rather than something to complete.

I like it even more this time as I started to lean even more into “just immerse yourself and act as part of this world” approach since my first playthrough. Playing it again also made me really wish there was a modernized version of this concept - here’s hoping The Wayward Realms turns out decent… or just releases in general.

I hope they will but it wouldn’t hurt to nag them about it, just in case.

It might be related to the recently announced move to make Ubisoft Connect completely optional for Steam games.
I’m just speculating since they only mentioned it in regards to The Rogue Prince of Persia (bottom of the page) but they might roll out it to everything else as well? Maybe? Possibly.

Nice to finally have a date. I played the demo a good few months ago and it was pretty great, can’t wait for the full release.

（　ﾟДﾟ）But no one said we can’t cheat!

Here are a few that stuck in my mind throughout the years:

• FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn - End of an Era - even for someone completely uninterested in FFXIV this thing went hard. Heck, re-watching it now still gives me chills.
• Kane & Lynch 2 Dog Days - War Junkie - I love the contrast between the rough and shitty situation of a dude who can’t let go of criminal life compared to a psychopath who managed to get his life together.
• Leviathan: Warships Jazzy Trailer with Jazz Boatman - smooth and sultry, like a boat (I don’t know what this suppose to mean but the trailer is great).

GoG does, dunno about Epic.

Does NMS allow you to play the older patches at least? It really sucks whenever games change significantly without an ability to stick with what you like.

I really like checking out oldies in their original form, even if there’s a “better” remake/remaster available. It’s fun to see what those games had to offer in their prime.

As for Cyberpunk, I’m playing both the most up to date version (2.13 with Phantom Liberty + mods) and the legacy one (version 1.16).

There were a lot of gameplay and design changes in the 2.0 release. Since I played the game before that, I had a constant reaction of some things being… off. I wasn’t sure whether my mixed feelings had to do with nostalgia or if I really liked some of the old gameplay more, so I decided to reinstall the legacy version to confirm (thanks CDPR for keeping it available).

Long story short, while I do like some of the things they did with the game and genuinely believe it’s a better product overall, I’d be lying if I said I prefer the new version. I still have fun and all the technical improvements, free content and access to mods make for an easy choice but boy do I wish there was a way to port those to the legacy version. There are a few mods that restore some of the old design choices which gives me a sliver of hope for a potential larger restoration in the future. For now though, I’ll just keep enjoying what’s there.

Mostly Spyro (the PSX one) and both versions of Cyberpunk 2077. Alternatively Muse Dash if I don’t have much time (or will) to go for a longer session.

Huh, didn’t even realize that. Guess it’s time to party! ヽ(✧ω✧)ノ

Praise be to Yevon! Now do the other ones.

Just a heads up, your spoiler is broken (you’re missing the first spoiler keyword).

Man, I love the vehicle handling. It’s far from perfect but I much prefer the weightiness of Cyberpunk (or GTA IV) over more “Hollywood” approach of most games. I realize I’m in a minority on this one but I hope they keep it in the next game (just with extra polish, obviously).

I recently restarterd my playthrough (first time touching the game since 2.0 dropped) so I’m not done with the game yet but my very brief thoughts are: I like the new content and technical improvements, I’m not entirely sold on gameplay changes and have more fun with the old mechanics to some extent (I actually reinstalled the legacy version to compare). There are some things I really appreciate in the latest version but over all legacy is more up my alley.

It’s still a great game and probably will end up as one of my favorites despite all its issues. Will see how I feel after I’m done with it.

I came back to Cyberpunk 2077 recently. First time touching the game since the 2.0 update and I have to say I’m a bit mixed on the changes (I actually reinstalled the legacy version to make sure I’m not just misremembering things).

I’ll probably post a longer write up once I’m done with my playthrough (or at least do more testing and comparison between both version) but for now my main takeaway is this: I like the new content and all the technical improvements, gameplay, while better from a design and balance perspective, lost some of the fun for me in the process. It’s still a great title and I enjoy it quite a bit but yeah… I miss some of the old unbalanced jank of a game we had before.

Rockstar showed their thoughts on IV clearly in GTAV, I don’t think you have to worry about it anymore.

I currently doing a playthrough funnily enough, didn’t realize it was so close to an anniversary.

I’ve been spending more time exploring and doing side activities this time around, just driving around and taking photos. It ended up being quite a surprising experience. I was surprised with how easy the game is, how fast the story moves or how empty some parts of the world are (makes sense considering when it released). Taking the world in a more touristy way was an interesting change compared to how I experienced those games before. It’s also a way of playing I’ve been trying to move towards more and more recently (doing the same with Cyberpunk as well).

I still think it’s a great game but IV and, to lesser extent, Vice City are probably my favorites as far as mainline games are concerned. IV especially as it had a nice grounded approach to gameplay with weighty movement, interactions and driving, as well as the story - it sucks most people hated this as GTAV ended up being a rather mid experience for me.

I only properly played 1, 2 and a bit of Black Flag but based on that and what I’ve seen from all the other games I’m gonna stick with the first one.

Investigations were… well actual investigation, gameplay mechanics while simple and satisfying weren’t overly automated and the game wasn’t burdened with all the bloat that came afterwards. Simplified movement system from later games, one that’s fighting you whenever you try to do something even a little out of game’s comfort zone, is probably my major sticking point with the series.

That said, I’m not sure if that would be the best choice for you. If you want to try the classic approach I’d suggest going with the Ezio trilogy (II, Brotherhood, Revelations) as these games are more polished, if a little bloated, compared to the first game. They should still hold up well enough to have fun.

Ubisoft also announced both The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest will have an offline mode (twitter post, screenshot). Looks like the Stop Killing Games campaign is working.

Speaking of, if you’re in EU make sure to sign the The European Citizens’ Initiative petition - we’re already over 30% required signatures!

I think an important step would be to not be afraid of creating characters with actual… well, character. It was somewhat mentioned in the video but it seems like devs are unwilling to make NPCs with their own likes and dislikes, ones that might disagree with players instead of being all over them no matter what. This might be a slight exaggeration but boy do I wish we had more “real” feeling NPCs in games. I’m sure I’m not the only one who couldn’t care less about being the most important being in the universe and would rather be treated as an equal part of the world.

From a mechanical standpoint, relationship system in Scarlet Hollow feels like a good step into making interactions more natural (here is a detailed look by one of the devs) but I realize it’s a lot of work for something a good chunk of players won’t care about. I understand why this isn’t something many (especially bigger) devs would be interested in using but it’s still a disappointment.

Maybe AI will be able to help somewhat with this problem in the future but I’m not going to hold my breath on that.

I’m sticking to slowly clearing my backlog for now but thanks for the recommendation! So much to play, so little time…

Oh, I didn’t try to imply you did. It’s just I’ve seen a lot of talk about this route being more… rough (on a story rather than quality level), so to speak? If that’s the case I’m just not in a headspace for something like that and would rather play it when I’m in a position to better appreciate what’s there. Maybe I just misunderstood people’s thoughts about it, that’s also a possibility.

Either way I do want to go back to it eventually, if only to spend some more time with both characters (I do find them fun whenever they show up in other routes).

A lot of comments I’ve seen about Shizune’s route suggested it probably wouldn’t be something I’ll enjoy, that’s why I decided to skip it for now. I might give it a shot some day but for now I’m just happy with all the other great stuff in the VN.

Katawa Shoujo is great!

I played it years ago and decided to replay it again a few months back. My initial playthrough was limited to Hanako’s route (got a bad ending which I’m kind of baffled by after the replay) so this time I wanted to try out the other ones as well. Rin’s story ended up being a surprise highlight of the whole process in a way I wasn’t really prepared for (had some very familiar thoughts showing up there). Her whole story just clicked with me and wouldn’t let go until some time after finishing it.

All the other routes were great as well (haven’t touched Shizune/Misha one) and I’m glad I decided to give it another shot for an expanded experience. It was worth it and made me wish for more games with disabled protagonist/characters (without using it as their main characteristic obviously).

I tried playing Bahamut Lagoon, a Japan only SNES TRPG, but had to stop due to some technical issues with the unofficial translation. The little bit I did manage to play (prologue and the first scene after that) was interesting enough so I’ll definitely try again, I just need to get back to my PC so I can research what’s wrong with it.

To keep with the theme I started Jeanne d’Arc, the PSP TRPG, instead. I like the art style, animated cutscenes and gameplay. Not a huge fan of the fantastical elements but they’re not a dealbreaker either. I’m not sure what to think about the story just yet - I like it for the most part but there are some things that make me a bit wary since they might potentially turn into tropes I’m not going to be happy with. It’s a “wait and see” for now since I’m still pretty early on. It’s good so far.

Can’t say I share your experience with either game but I can understand it doesn’t work for everyone. Personally, I can’t really imaging playing this, Kao the Kangaroo or old Tomb Raider titles without tank controls for example.

To be clear, your comment is exactly what I meant - you tried and don’t like it, that’s absolutely fine. There’s plenty of games I couldn’t get into due to controls or mechanics so I feel you. On the other hand, I met people who refuse to even try to engage with certain mechanics and that’s what I’m not a fan of. I’m all for remakes/remasters/rereleases updating things to let more people enjoy the old thing and hope this will be the case with Croc. And hey, even if they change something in a way I don’t like, there’s always* the classic version.

* Though not always an official way to get it.

Ah, I thought people had some specific issues besides the game having tank controls. Fair enough.

I’m not going to begrudge someone for not liking a control scheme (unless their only reason is not wanting to learn how to play differently) but I do think some people dislike it without even giving it a fair shake. The thing is, these games were designed with this control scheme in mind and switching to a modern one can be detrimental to the experience (compare playing REmake with and without tank controls, the latter makes navigation and avoiding enemies much easier).

Oh well, everyone has their own dislikes.

Edit: I read a bit more and apparently the game always had an option to play with some kind of “modern” controls when using a controller with sticks? I’m guessing they’ll probably polish those.

I totally agree. I just don’t have much expectations towards big publishers anymore, I guess. Not many approach the topic of remakes/remasters from the point of view of celebrating their history unfortunately. Heck, we had multiple instances of publishers removing the old versions from sale just to push people to the new one.

Low effort or not, companies (and many players to be honest) rarely care about their legacy.

As much as I like this idea I don’t think many publishers would look at it and said anything other than “yeah, not worth the money”. We probably have a higher chance for the classic versions landing on GoG than being added as a freebie to a remake - they want you to play the new shiny thing, not the old one after all (that and no need to provide support to the old version).