This exchange just popped back into my head for some reason. Your description of the approach to the flower was spot-on! Turns out it just happens to be a similar approach to Siofra. Took me a few attempts, and fire damage is a bit of a miserable situation for my dex build with a bit of int (level 150, scadutree… 9, I think? Maybe 10?), but I got there. I found that the best thing I could do was actually just to absolutely max out my own durability and accept that I was only getting one attack off per opportunity. I was having a really rough time avoiding the thorn eruption attacks, so the crimson seed talisman basically giving me two extra flasks worth of health was great. So long as I used fire damage and hit it in the “face” I didn’t really need to do anything else to get plenty of damage

I have since gone through the specimen storehouse and found my way into Rauh, which I was absolutely delighted by because it looks exactly like Shadow of the Colossus and I’d been itching to get there ever since I found that waygate that gives you a preview of it

I suppose it makes sense for it to be tough considering that it’s intended as an endgame expansion and it’s also replicating the new character low level experience with the scadu blessing system

I have actually found that the Land of Shadow has heaps of alternate routes to places, they’re just much less obvious than before. The map is so wildly vertical and overlapping that finding a spiritspring or a tunnel or one of those cliffside staircases of protruding gravestones can take you to a whole new area

I have not seen whichever part that is, no. Although it sounds like the same experience as finding Siofra for the first time, which I think was one of my favourite moments in the entire game

Nothing wrong with that! I hit an absolute brick wall with Margit when I first played the base game because I hadn’t played a Souls game in years. I explored around until I found the secret route to Liurnia and did most of that before I even got into Stormveil

There’s one with three phases? That is so absolutely going to catch me out with no flasks left whenever I first get to it, god dammit. I can’t wait

Which one is the third? I’ve done Belurat and Castle Ensis (if it counts?), only just started poking around in Shadow Keep but it looks absolutely wild so far. I also made it to the putrescent knight’s arena but I’ve not tried actually fighting it yet, just jumped in once to see what was going on at the end of a session

The knight was pretty brutal, but fortunately this run has been my “learn to parry” one, so I came basically perfectly equipped to fight any player-model enemy that isn’t using colossal weapons

Oh hey, I grew up playing Gran Turismo as well! I actually dug out the old Playstation 1 when I was seeing family last Christmas and we had a splitscreen session racing each other on the 1997 one. It was a blast

That kind of in-depth career mode is oddly rare in modern sim racers. A lot of them are very online PvP-focussed. And I get that, but still, it’d be nice to have more. Things that come to mind are:

• The original Assetto Corsa is a bit old now and the Content Manager and Custom Shader Patch mods are basically mandatory, BUT it is extremely flexible to mod and you can make it look exactly like a Gran Turismo game if you want. It has a career mode, but it’s only a series of specific racing challenges and there’s no collecting or modifying of cars
• Assetto Corsa Evo is in very early access right now, but it might just be exactly what you’re looking for when it does fully come out. It’s due to have a single player career mode, it looks like it’s going to do some kind of car collection mechanic, and it even has honest-to-god Gran Turismo style licence tests
• Automobilista 2 does not have a career mode (yet? It’s on the main menu but greyed out), but apparently a fan decided they were going to do it themselves. AMS also comes with the advantage of having much better multiplayer than Assetto Corsa if you want to play with friends; AC’s multiplayer is quite limited and does not let you add AI to fill out the grid
• Grid Legends might be worth a look, but I can’t tell you what it’s actually like to play because I haven’t tried it. I have played Dirt Rally 2 by the same devs and it does have a very GT-esque career mode. It describes itself as simcade, though, so it may just be another Forza for you depending on how it drives
• Le Mans Ultimate is a more specialised experience, of course, but it’s due to get a proper in-depth career mode soon

It is a pretty dim time for the single player sim racing experience, but there’s fun to be had!

everything in the modding scene seems to be in order

Just tried this out recently. It’s good fun. I do wish it explained itself a little better at the start - I had no idea that it was essentially a roguelite for about the first hour I played - but it gets that feeling of momentum at the edge of wiping out just right

Putting the blackgaol knight where he is is a frankly hilarious statement of how the DLC is gonna be. I’m good enough at the games to beat everything without cheese or summons (I do think that summoning is fine, I just don’t personally enjoy it unless it’s an NPC I like), but I find that some Elden Ring bosses push the edge of what I have the reaction speed for. Morgott and Maliketh were particularly troublesome for me. I haven’t gotten to anyone in the DLC that has hit that mark of pace yet, but I assume someone will

I’m not super knowledgeable on racing games, but I’m happy to try to help! What have you got available and what do you like?

Mostly Elden Ring and Automobilista 2. I finally got Shadow of the Erdtree but had to take a bit to git gud git less bad again before diving into the Land of Shadow, not helped at all by the fact that the character I wanted to go in with was not at all well-suited to fight Mohg. Still, I’m enjoying it a great deal. The map design is phenomenal, I keep just stopping to look at the landscape for a bit

Automobilista is just the go-to for having a game with some other friends who also like racing sims at the moment. It’s not my favourite in terms of driving physics, but it’s good enough, the car classes being relatively balanced is nice for variety in races, and I’m honestly really enjoying trying out all the South American tracks that I’ve never heard of

Oooh I got started on that recently and then pulled away by other things, but I was enjoying it a great deal. The campaign is bit… ehhh. But that actual gameplay is a blast. I love the sense of scale (as long as you don’t think too hard about the actual numbers it gives you for the weights of things)

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime in particular is hilarious if you get four people playing it

I’m going with “they absolutely did see it coming and are confident that they can make it go away for less money than an actual marketing campaign that gets the same amount of attention would cost”

They’ve got a veneer of plausible deniability, basically no need to expend any money on the material, and just enough of a chance to filter out anything that uses the image of someone that could actually afford to fight them in court about it

I would love to see a screenshot of this creation if you have one

That’s good to hear! I’m looking forward ot trying it. I used to love mountain biking when I was younger and I was reeeaaasonably good at it, but I’ve had enough sports injuries in my life so that’s at the wayside by now

Ooooh, this is a fascinating combination. I had no idea it was a possibility. I already have BeamNG too so I’m halfway there

You didn’t miss out on much with Fusion. I enjoyed the post-Fusion games on the PSP a lot though

Thanks for all the information on BNG!

It definitely was slow compared to BNG. The later games picked up the pace a bit, but never to that extent. The focus was more on trying to race cleanly with very slidey and floaty physics. In the original particularly, touching the walls at all would immediately bring you to a complete halt

Watching a couple of videos just now, I do think that Redout has managed to develop a far stronger visual and musical language than most of its competitors outside of Wipeout (and Pacer, to a lesser degree). The long high-precision aerial segments look difficult, but in the kind of way that would be really satisfying to get right

There are things BallisticNG does though that are really interesting, like solo races where your goal is to go as far as possible without exploding from damage. You can’t use the brakes and it gets faster every few sections. Those are probably my favorite races.

That’s actually something Wipeout did, it’s one of the few things from Fusion that people liked enough for it to be brought back. But it’s a lot of fun, so seeing it in in BallisticNG is a selling point for me

Oh cool, I’ve never even heard of this one. Allowing the player some actual control over the z-axis is such an obvious thing to add to an AG racer now that I’ve seen it, but I’ve never even considered it before

Dirt Rally 2 is excellent! I’ve actually walked along a couple of the stages too, I was quite impressed by how well they recreated them. The limitations on multiplayer formats annoyed me quite a lot, but I do think it’s the only game I’ve ever played where rallycross felt like it really worked well, and I love the rallycross format

I’ve been keeping an eye out for BallisticNG! Sadly it wasn’t significantly discounted in the sale, so it’s one to pick up either when it is on sale or when I have gotten through the rest of my unplayed games. I was initially put off a little by just how hard it seemed to be aping early Wipeout, but someone on here persuaded me to take a look

What’s Redout actually like to play? I have seen a little bit of gameplay and it looks like it’s aiming above all to feel as blindingly fast as possible

Hah, that looks like the gameplay of PS3 / Xbox 360 era Ridge Racer but sent back to Ridge Racer 1993 graphics. Definitely seems like one of those delightful projects where someone just has nostalgia for something and also has the skills and drive to just do it themselves

Absolute nonsense for this post to have 61 comments and none of them have mentioned Outer Wilds yet. Echoes of the Eye could be its own separate answer to this as well. Take a listen to this track, it is the essence of adventure in audio form

The Opened Way is the greatest fantasy boss fight music ever composed

The intro piece is another favourite of mine. So fantastically atmospheric, melancholy and hopeful and lonely all at once

There’s a great video of the Outer Wilds devs watching someone speedrun their game, and at the end of it one of them jokes, “We made a very short game”

This article is about to make my steam wishlist a good chunk longer, I think

There is also a UK petition, which has itself cleared the required threshold. Are those the out-of-EU signatures you mean?

It’s normal for CG artists to do their best to make their work look like real life and not CG, though. Death Stranding is clearly attempting to look as realistic as they can manage

I haven’t played the remaster so I can’t guarantee this will work, depending on what has changed, but ironically levelling up more might be the solution you need here. If the level scaling is still as completely fucked as it was in the original, the enemies should get stronger pretty quick. If you only level non-combat stuff they should get to a point that you find appropriate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJHXe_9uhxw

Here’s the teaser, since they reformed the team with a new name so it might not be easy to find. I think this is the only thing they’ve released about it so far, which doesn’t really tell us much other than that they’re making something, but honestly I’m just excited to see more from them. It being published by Epic suggests to me that it’ll come to PC, which is a relief for me because I don’t have a console

That’s totally fair! I’m very much of the opinion that while From’s soulslikes are great and much less insurmountable (a word I choose carefully — they are difficult, but they can be learned) than their reputation suggests, that still doesn’t mean that everyone will actually find them fun. If the combat isn’t to your taste then that’s an entirely reasonable position. Elden Ring is particularly demanding in terms of the pace of combat compared to the Souls games as well

Shadow of the Colossus is such an incredible game. I think it was the first game I played that showed me that games could do more than just being fun to play. It wasn’t the first to attempt to do that, certainly, but it was the first to show that to me and it has stuck in my memory ever since. The soundtrack is phenomenal too. Have you seen that the dev team teased a new game late last year?

I beat every boss in base game Elden Ring without parrying once, using melee only, and no ashes or player summons either (I summoned NPCs a few times if it was an NPC I liked or an interesting story, which meant summoning them for Morgott, Fire Giant, and the two gargoyles). I even got Malenia, eventually! I don’t say this as a brag, because I am NOT good at these games. I say it to say that if I can do it, basically anyone can.

I think it’s a matter of mindset. You’ve got to go in psychologically prepared to fail a over and over again, and you’ve got to be analytical enough to figure out why you failed. If you’re really struggling with a boss, maybe don’t even try to attack for a couple of runs, just focus on figuring out when to dodge and when you have windows. Maybe your current weapon isn’t the right one for the job because it’s a bit too slow to hit this boss or it does a damage type that the boss resists. Maybe you just need to go somewhere else for a bit and come back with more vigour and a better weapon. Elden Ring is really good for letting you do that.

Obviously that’s not going to be a process that everyone enjoys, and if someone doesn’t enjoy it that’s totally fair enough. It’s a game, we’re all just here to have fun. But the actual skill floor is one almost everyone can achieve if they want to and approach it ready to experiment and learn

If you’re able to, get the version with the all the DLC. I think I paid £5 for that vs £3 for just the base game. The extra stuff is well worth getting

I’m afraid not. “Rally” is just the generic term for this kind of motorsport

Couldn’t tell you I’m afraid, I also haven’t bought it. I grabbed DR2 because I saw it really cheap on sale and just wanted a rally sim rather than seeking out a specific one

Well count me interested. I could really go for a version of Dirt Rally 2 with more multiplayer versatility

That doesn’t really answer the question. Once you have bought it, why do you then wait a month before playing them? That doesn’t affect the price at all

Half-Life: Noita

Based on your enjoyment of management and strategy, Paradox’s grand strategy games might be something you enjoy. Same publisher as Cities Skylines. There are four main series of them, each with their own mechanics but enough broad-scale similarities that knowing one helps with the others. They are:

• Crusader Kings, set in medieval Europe, North Africa, and about half of Asia. This one is the most roleplay-heavy, as you play as a succession of characters within a feudal dynasty rather than a country
• Europa Universalis, set from the European Renaissance up to the end of the Napoleonic wars. The whole world is playable, and exploration is a big mechanic
• Victoria, which covers the world through the rise of industrialism. This one is the most simulation-heavy, focusing gameplay around economic development and the diplomatic manoeuvring of great powers
• Hearts of Iron, which is the Second World War game. This is the one to go for if you want to play the military side of things

What distinguishes them from strategy games like Civ and Age of Empires is the greatly-reduced abstraction. There’s no expectation of every starting point or playable country being balanced; if you start as Belgium in Hearts of Iron, you’re going to have to do something clever to not get steamrolled by Germany. There’s also no win condition beyond what you set for yourself. When I start a game of Crusader Kings, I’m not trying to win the game, I’m saying to myself “let’s see if I can unite all of Britain and Ireland under a Gaelic ruler”

All Paradox games have quite a lot of DLC, but the base games are solid (often now including several of the earlier DLCs for free, in the case of older games) and they go on steep sales pretty often. If there’s not a specific time period or mechanic that sways you towards one of the games, I recommend Crusader Kings 3 for the best new player experience