I recently grabbed division 2 and crew motorfest. Both on sale again for 90% off. More than enough content to keep me busy for a while.

Right there with you. Have a 4080, and only reason I got this one, was because it was cheaper(by a sizable chunk) than the 7900xtx when I got it.

You can replicate that with ranked, because you match people of similar skill levels. SF6 has you go from rookie to diamond which is matched with people of similar skill levels, usually within ±1 rank so a gold 2 Vs a gold 3. Then when you get to diamond there is a small chance to match against a Master rank and you get higher reward for beating them(up to 250lp). Then when you have climbed to the top of Diamond 5, you move to master rank. In Master you then switch to a proper elo system.

This removes the vast majority of people getting absolutely stomped on by people who have 1000+ hours when you have 10. You still have to put in time and effort if you want to get better like you did as a kid, but you’re more likely to get fun and closer matches.

I will mention something that looks cool and reminiscent of F-Zero, Hyper Sonic GP. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4236690/Hypersonic_GP/

Single player only though, but looks interesting.

There are a few games I am interested in.

Early Access updates for Assetto Corsa Rally

Marvel Tokon

The Expanse

Over the Hill

Densha Attack

Forza Horizon 6

I also super happy with Super Woden Rally Edge that came out this year, absolutely fantastic start to my year.

No, it is 2XKO because it is 2v2 and you need to KO both characters. It is a garbage name

I have bought a handful in the last 2-3 years. Street Fighter 6 a couple costumes, Juri Onesie and Blanka-chan. And… That is about it to be honest. You could add the battle pass for The Finals I guess as that’s all cosmetic

I feel like a lot of it is dumb people jumping on the bandwagon. But I do think a lot of the dislike/ disappointment since launch was warranted, things like terrible performance, the long matches which had weird downtime. 3v3 on ridiculous sized maps.

I didn’t like the trailer, and I definitely don’t think it should have been the finale for game awards(hurt it way more), but the dumb hate wagon for it and calling it concord 2 was dumb.

I keep seeing people saying that another team could work. But I think that would actually have a massive detrimental effect on the game. That adds another base, less chance of a comeback, and then you end up where you started in a 3v3 in an even more empty map with even longer matches.

This needs larger teams. Like 8v8 or 10v10 so you actually end up with skirmishes during the downtime. Your still going to have long matches, but at least something is more likely to happen. Or they need to rework the formula of the matches a fair bit.

If you just want to jump into something small, and single player. Super Woden Rally Edge would be my first suggestion.

Then from there you can decide what you want to jump in to next, more rally would be Assetto Corsa Rally, or Maybe something a little older like Dirt rally 2 or EAs WRC. Rally is probably the easier choice for controller if you want to start diving in to more sim racing stuff.

If you decide you want to look more into track racing, check out Raceroom as it is free and you can do a few weeks of their free multiplayer races(learn the tracks first) or some free stuff in single player, or you can grab something like Automobilista 2 on a sale for cheap, these are both pretty drivable on a game pad, but a bit easier to jump in on a wheel. Assetto Corsa and Assetto Corsa Evo are probably not great on a game pad to jump into, but pretty good options for driving on a wheel, with something like Le Mans Ultimate being the current multiplayer sim racing game of choice(not including iRacing).

If you decide that you want to stick to something more arcade, and controller friendly then Forza Horizon is really good and probably the best option. Gran Tourismo 7 is also a good option if you are only on playstation.

It’s not really a hero shooter, but I think it stands out. The Finals.

You have 3 distinct class options. Light, Medium and Heavy, with base build options for each one.

So as a light you are small fast and then can have one of 3 abilities, dashes, a grappling hook, or invisibility. A medium, more health but larger and slower, can have a healing gun, turret or dematerializer(temporarily remove walls). Or finally a heavy, very big and slow, but even more health, and can choose between a hook, shield, charge(smashes through walls), or a good gun.

You the pick a gun, and 4 utility options. The guns are class locked, so you can have a mp5 on a light, but a heavy gets a M60, all distinct and a pretty well matched for the classes. You utility options are more mixed, you have general options like frag, pyro, gas and goo grenades, but also specific ones like a jump pad for medium, or teleport gates for light, heavy gets barricades.

So while it isn’t a hero shooter it’s got a nice blend of hero shooter elements, and I personally love that it couples that with destructible environments. The main game mode(cashout and tournament), is a 3v3v3v3 capture and hold with 2 active points that can also be doubled up, but the point you hold is movable. You can bury it under rubble, move it into the open, or just fortify the area as best you can.

I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for more heros shooters, if you don’t mind relaxing the hero part of it .

It also runs on windows as well, and has Amazon games integration.

With all of that in mind then, I would also suggest keeping an eye on Super Woden: Rally Edge. Big list of cars to collect and upgrade, local multiplayer and the previous games are well received. There is also a Demo for Super Woden GP2 which should give you an idea for what to expect.

For arcade racing games, keep an eye on iRacing Arcade. It is a small roster of licensed cars and tracks, but seems to have a good single player mode(need to see more), and should have good online racing as well. Demo was excellent and I believe it is still available.

I have been spending a bit of time enjoying the Nords in Race Room Racing Experience, the game is a lot of fun and really enjoying their new ranked races.

I have also spent some time in Le Mans Ultimate, but have had a bad time since the last update, which had been turning me off it. Turns out the update broke something so it no longer matched the driver for wheel rotation, and manually setting the has fixed everything. Bring on the 6hrs of Monza this weekend.

The Finals has been my go to multiplayer game and is amazing fun. Love the 3v3v3v3 capture and hold with all the destruction.

I also picked up Escape from Duckov in the sale, that has been a lot of fun and has been very satisfying to chill out with after racing or a few rounds of the finals.

I mostly agree with you, I feel like most games with staying power, are games that fundamentally will have you playing because you enjoy it.

I don’t think I can write off seasons in multiplayer games though, some games do benefit from having larger changes that happen at the end of these seasons.

Battle passes can at best be fine(if they at least pay for the next one), I don’t think any are particularly good as a metric for staying power, you still need/want to enjoy playing the game to progress the battle pass.

For me the best staying power is a game that has complexity and depth to mechanics. So I have something to improve on and chase(like lap times in sim racing)

And that’s numberwang!

I don’t know, makes a lot of sense critically to me.

If you think about the last few big games they were behind, Hogwarts Legacy stands out, Mortal Kombat I guess, throw in what ever the last Lego game was.

But you also have Suicide Squad, Gotham Knights, Multiversus these massive games that just have an awful reputation.

Arkham Knight is nearly a decade old, Middle Earth series is around that same time. Back for Blood is newish but that never exactly set the world on fire.

My gut reaction was pretty shocked, cause I have amazing memories and fondness of some WB games, then I remember that was 10+ years ago with MK9, Batman Arkham Asylum and City, Mad Max, Bastion, Scribblenauts…

I feel like this is also the best time to do this.

F1 25 is not great, the game needs to be sorted out and revamped for it to prosper again in my opinion. The best time for them to have done this was last year, so they could come out swinging for 2026.

But I think coming out next year with a new game that has had time for the 2026 cars to be worked on and settled in is a good choice as well. They just need to get their shit together and put out a good game… Which for racing games seems to be almost impossible

Well, that seems like a good time to check things out. Thanks for letting me know.

How much luck am I going to have with my SIM rig? Moza R12 and CRP pedals.

I know Le Mans ultimate will run mostly fine with a custom proton. But I have no idea where to start with the wheel, and what I can find seems like it might be out dated but could be a right pain(especially on bazzite) to get installed.

While you may not need support for the game. The games would not do as well as they do without it. They are predominantly an online multiplayer game. I am no the biggest Tekken fan, but I am a pretty big fan of Street Fighter, I have over 1000 hours on SF6. If it didnt have the good online multiplayer, and just had just had the offline and single player stuff, I would have something like 100 hours maybe and would have moved on to other games.

And that makes a big difference, to how much I am willing to buy into both characters and costumes, and also the next game.

Tekken 8 and SF6 still have good(for fighting games) single player stuff, but you are looking at a simple story and some arcade modes. SF6 has a bit more of a single player RPG almost for its single player, and I have managed to sink around 80 hours into that, they add more with each new character and I believe it is free.

And to go back to Tekken, Tekken 3 had 22 characters, While Tekken 7 had 36, which then increases to 51 if you add in the addition characters, Tekken 8 currently has ~40 with more being added. They are fine games, with all the content that you want(mostly) in the base game, but the biggest difference between Tekken 3 and Tekken 7 or 8 is it isnt being replaced in a couple years by a new full priced game, it is getting patches and support, additional mechanics and moves, new characters. And the online/competitive community can thrive.

Tekken 8 has Volley ball. Tekken 7 got Bowling but that was as a DLC.

I think that fighting games are in a much better place with the season passes(character DLC) than previously.

They are a much more long term game, with better balance patches and additions through mechanics to the game. Tekken 7 for example was supported for 7 years and you can jump in with just the base game. This also applies to other games like Street Fighter 5 and 6, Guilty Gear Strive and so on.

Where as if you go back to Street fighter 4 as an example, The support was limited and then they added more with a new game, Super Street Fighter 4, which then got replaced with Ultra Street Fighter 4, and you could not play someone who had Super if you only had Ultra which sucked for the online community.

I do think there is a lot of issues with where Fighting Games are going, but that is more an industry thing. Like battle passes, avatar clothes and other shit as micro transactions.

Shinobi: Art of vengeance. It is a 2D brawler with stages that end with a boss, but they have metroidvania elements to add value for replaying them. It is about 10 hours to go start to finish while doing a lot of the back tracking stuff. Simple story but incredible combat and good level design(only one level I thought was a bit meh), the art and animations are fantastic as well. Very much a new take on the old games, and has a demo to try as well.

I mean, not advertised as a demo but any beta you get access to as a preorder bonus and it is close to release, I consider more of a paid demo. Has become less common now though.

I would be interested if I was building a new pc. This would make connecting all of my SIM rig nice and easy, as well as my other controllers and peripherals. It is a bit excessive, but I have no doubt every port would end up used.

I would be incredibly surprised if they charge for the update. It makes no sense to do so, you just split the community. And they announced 2 new characters(at least), so V2 will come with a new season pass they will charge for.

I also presume the V2 is the release of the new ranked mode, which hopefully fixes the garbage tower and it’s floor mechanic(preferably just delete it and give us a ranked queue with elo please)

I think(but it has been a long time since I touched gamepass) there is a timeframe between login checks.

So you might be able to download something, use it for a week, then have to re-authorise again.

But I don’t know the time frame, so might be 48 hours or a month.

Game pass isn’t going to come to steam deck. Not as a native app that installs games locally. You can already stream games through the web browser that’s all you will get.

The fact they are making changes to windows and partnering with Asus on releasing Xbox hardware in the same space is more than enough evidence, but also, the steam deck is a tiny part of the market(it might be the best but it is still tiny).

Linux as a whole is also nothing for Microsoft to worry about, it is slowly increasing in market share, sure. But it is nothing on the scale of windows, and won’t be for years at the current growth rate.

In this context, Tekken and other fighting games have competitive and content seasons. Where over a year winners from large international events earn places in a final, and new characters/stages are released

After the final there is normally a very large update to the game which comes with new game mechanics and large balance changes, and the start of a content season pass. With enough time before the first tournament kicks off(street fighter is being weird this year though)

For Tekken that season patch dropped recently but was a massive let down(fuck up) and the community wasn’t happy with it at all.

However that was a limited time bundle which they no longer sell. Cause fucking smarts.

https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-games/Super-Mario-3D-All-Stars-1832369.html

I didn’t even dare to hope. Just look at the games that have been put out over the decade? With such high quality games like Anthem, Andromeda and now Veil Guard.

Yeah, Bioware is just a name, and has no prestige anymore.

Rollerdrome is the name of the game in the picture.

Could also talk about Olli Olli World which also go delisted at the same time.

But I am not clicking on the article to double check.

Yeah, I have a love(like… tolerate)/hate relationship with the battle pass. I don’t mind it, cause it is cheap, pointless and you get your money back, and it is super easy to complete it.

But also, it can fuck off, battle passes suck in their timed implementation, it is pointless, you have to get premium currency to get it which is obviously not purchasable at the exact amount.

Only thing I think was good is that it bought in the emulated game catalogue.

I think that’s missing a lot of the content. If SF6 was free to play, if wouldn’t have the single player portion. And would have had a couple of free characters.

2XKO is going to launch with something like 9 characters(might be missing remembering the number), Maybe they add more before release but it is a tiny roster for a tag game.

There is also massive changes between games, and they don’t disappear, so you can still have those tournaments. If it goes free to play, I feel like they kinda get stuck with the game and systems and no easy way to move onwards, with a bit of a PR nightmare(abandoning the game and all that).

I feel like there is pros and cons to both methods, but don’t really think f2p Street Fighter is a good move. I do think sf7 whenever that is released will be another paid game, and will be more expensive upfront.

While true, the base game is still only 60.

If I had to spend an additional 40 for just the base game(not the 2 seasons of characters), that would be a much harder sell.

I think there is maybe 1 game that I would consider spending 100 for the base game. And that’s because I love the series and it is very much a long term game for me, Street Fighter.

But that would be a very tough sell, it would have to be something really special to part with that much, even though I know I would get 1000s of hours out of it

I have played a lot of FFXIV, but have stopped playing for a couple years now. Spending a fair chunk of time in Street Fighter and Monster Hunter, but I have a feeling that will change over the next year with Assetto Corsa Competizione and AC Evo potentially taking the monster hunter spots.

To me this is more like, the playstation 6 will have online connectivity.