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Mod support is a surefire path to silliness if you have a playerbase that cares. Assetto Corsa is an extremely straight-faced game, but people still modded in things like “your car is a big stompy t-rex” and “everyone races on office chairs”


Yes, and Gods & Kings. I did technically play the game without them but it was long enough ago now that I don’t really remember it without them


I’m not the person that you asked, but I do hold the same opinion. My biggest reasons are:

  • Civs are far more incentivised to expand in VI, resulting in more conflict
  • Districts make city placement a much more complicated question
  • The city state influence game is much more interesting than just a spending race and also has more game-changing rewards
  • The culture and science victories are much more interactive with other civs now, rather than just hiding away and waiting for a bar to fill

I don’t think V is bad by any means. It was the one that got me into the series after bouncing off III and IV. I just think that most of the changes in VI were improvements


There are a lot of paid mods for the original AC, so I expect that will be part of it. However, I do think that there are two other reasons for the devs to want to host a platform of their own:

  • Being able to remove content ripped from other games, which will help keep them out of trouble
  • Giving users the option to automatically download the mods necessary to join a multiplayer game

I agree, although I think that they would understand how harmful a lack of mod support would be to the game. I hope they do, anyway


They’ve said it will be moddable in the full release and that they intend to create their own platform to host mods


Ahh, that thing about the editions tracks with when I was playing on the tabletop. There were a couple of necron armies in the group I played with and they were always right stubborn bastards to put down. They didn’t hit that hard, but you sure as hell had to hit them hard if you wanted to make any headway


I’m not exactly up to date on my 40k lore, do the necrons have some kind of disposable chaff unit now? Back when I played they were the tankiest army in the entire game, which definitely doesn’t work for a game in which you are usually carving through a massive mob

::: Space Marine 2 spoilers I was, of course, pretty gutted that they never showed up in the latter part of the campaign. I was playing through the campaign with a friend that doesn’t know the setting much but who loves Terminator, and the instant I saw the signs of necron stuff going on I thought I was going to get to see him become Power Armour Kyle Reese :::


2 was announced three years before it released, so I wouldn’t expect this to necessarily mean 3 is coming that soon


I wonder which faction they’ll use this time? The gameplay kinda depends on there being a huge horde of grunts to mow down, and they’ve now used the two non-humans factions that that description applies to



I don’t even like that genre of music much, but it is so perfect for Wipeout and the selection is excellent


I did play it! But I found the significantly lower usage of level scaling made it much less of a problem. Like… it is still a car crash of a system, but I don’t have to compete with the fact that every enemy in the world is scaled to challenge me if I a) levelled perfectly and b) put every level into combat skills

The random hit chance thing is a separate issue though


I tried that once, found it too tedious, and just stopped levelling up instead

There is a group that’s remaking Morrowind in Skyrim, but I have absolutely no idea how far along they are https://tesrskywind.com/


Oblivion without the comically fucked-up levelling system sounds like a blast


The start of Tunic being basically the exact same as Dark Souls made me laugh once I reaised what it was doing. “Here, take your rubbish weapon and your dodge roll and go ring two important bells in opposite directions from here. It’s important for saving the world.”

Tunic late-ish game spoilers

Holy shit the reveal of the endless rows of trapped ghost fox things was jaw-dropping. I think it worked even better specifically because of the adorable art style


I don’t know if that’s even cheese, I think it’s the intended solution. How do you handle three fast-moving enemies at once? Use the choke point that the devs put just behind them


Ahh, the capra demon. Bane of many a Dark Souls run. I’m sure that if you wanted guides you’d look them up, but honestly it’s not a bad fight at all if you can survive the scramble at the start



That sounds fascinating! I’m pretty tolerant of jank in games if they’re doing something engaging, and while I do enjoy the combat systems of the Souls games I am totally okay with a more abstracted system. Hell I love Paradox’s grand strategy games, and this sounds a lot like how battles work in those — the meaningful decision is in which fights you pick and how you prepare for them rather than your actions within the fight itself.


I’d be really interested to see an action RPG type game that just embraces the real-life scale of the world and lets you screw about with the rate of time passing like in Kerbal Space Program when you’re walking a long way. You’d have to limit the scale of the story to make it manageable to develop, but I think there’s the potential for something cool in there. Maybe there are only two or three villages in one valley, but they’re all full villages and they’re actually several kilometres apart. Make sure that whatever goals you have are time-gated in some way so that you actually have to weigh up whether you can afford to walk to the other village, because even though you fast-forward it so that it only takes a minute of real-life time to walk there it’s actually most of the day in-game.


Though I think you need 4. A human-ish one first, a four-legged bestial one, and a flying one, before the final one. Then the priest and crew arrive, and the end happens.

Oh, I was including what happens after the priest (whose name is Lord Emon, now that I have actually gone to check because I certainly didn’t remember) as one of the colossus battles. Just trying not to openly spoil a nearly 20-year-old game for some reason I guess. My concern is that the value of the colossus battles in the game comes largely in the form of puzzle-solving, something that won’t translate to film very easily. In the game, the fights don’t advance the narrative much. The deteriorating state of Wander and some of the environmental cues do, but neither of those require the actual fight to be shown in full. We need one fight to set up the nature and danger of Wander’s task, at least one more to make tangible that he has to do a bunch of these and they’re all differently dangerous, and the confrontation with Emon because that’s the conclusion to the story.

David Lowery (The Green Knight)

That’s a brilliant suggestion, that film was exactly what would be needed to adapt this game. I don’t have… well, much of any hope for the guy who is actually attached to it, but I suppose it’s unfair to judge him too hard before we have any idea of if or how it will actually happen


I think you could do a fair bit by following the priest and his soldiers that are chasing Wander more than the game did. He can provide exposition to the soldiers as they travel, seeing more and more pillars of light in the distance as they do so. Have some banter along the way to get us to like one or two or the soldiers as well. Play up this party’s protagonist energy.

In the meantime, let Wander talk to Dormin more. Dormin remains honest and helpful throughout the game, so I think you could easily add in concern for Wander and curioisity about why he’s doing what he is doing. “What a strange, fascinating little mortal. We do hope he knows what he’s doing.”

I suppose you could probably only show maybe three colossus fights max, including the ending. Picking which ones get done in full would be tough. First one almost certainly has to be on the list. I think the giant flying serpent in the desert is probably the best one visually, so that’d be my other pick


This director did the 2023 Flash film, so if it comes out I’m probably going to pretend it didn’t


I really ought to give Oblivion a playthrough with a few mods. It was my first Elder Scrolls game way back when, and I think my first RPG altogether, but I was playing it on console so I couldn’t change the fucked up levelling system


I’m really looking forward to it. It seems to be consistently recommended as the thing that offers the most similar experience to Outer Wilds, which I absolutely adore. A good puzzle that reveals a story is always such a satisfying way to spend a bit of brain power


Either Return of the Obra Dinn or Tyranny. Tyranny has been in my steam backlog for a little bit, but it feels like something I need to be ready to get mentally invested in


Yeah same, it is odd. I’d guess it was an accident



Even one of the biggest releases of this year was a DLC to Elden Ring, which means the actual game is still a few years old



It’s great fun! So long as you’re on board with the experience it is trying to create, of course. FromSoft are good at what they do and don’t much care for whether or not what they do is everyone’s cup of tea

I’d love to try Bloodborne, because that gameplay combined with a bit of cosmic horror sounds amazing to me. I’ll have to either wait for a PC port or learn about emulation, though

The thing that stuck out to me more than I expected about it is how painterly it often feels. It’s exceptionally good at framing its environments in a spectacular or pleasing way even while the player has full control of the camera. I’m not usually one to worry about visuals too much, but this game’s environments really stuck out to me. And while it is very high-fidelity and nicely rendered, it’s less about the actual graphical performance than it is about the design of the environments


  • Elden Ring. Only the base game, and this is my first run. I have been very thorough with it, though. I’m currently trying to beat Malenia, then it’s off to do the last boss

  • Victoria 2. Weekly multiplayer session with a couple of friends. It’s 1915, and my people have just elected an anti-military party that is really hampering my efforts to swing a big imperialist stick around

  • Lorn’s Lure. PS2 graphics, generous 3D platforming mechanics, and an impossibly vast and desolate megastructure to explore. Well I’m playing the demo of it, anyway. I am going to get the full version, it made a good impression.


I tried it out because I love the setting and we’ve obviously been somewhat starved for anything else Elder Scrolls, but I just couldn’t get into it. It felt like it never rewarded me for exploring like the main series does. There’s never something cool to find that’s just hidden out of the way.

I did also feel a bit miffed that the Northern Elsweyr story (the new one when I played, and the reason I wanted to play) was just the Skyrim civil war again, but without even the interesting idea of the rebel faction being nationalists against an empire. It was very little to do with anything about Elsweyr, and then dragons became the focal point again anyway

Obviously each to their own. I do see the appeal of it. It’s just not for me


I have loved the NSX in every sim I’ve driven it in. It has never been the car I’m fastest in, but it’s always the one I have the most fun in

I haven’t tried ACC, but I do have the original AC and a JGTC modpack in it


One of the Paradox strategy games by a comfortable margin. It’ll be one of the Crusader Kings or Victoria games. I’ve got a weekly game night with a couple of friends that was originally just CK, but has for a while now been working extremely slowly through a megacampaign. You can take the end of Crusader Kings and make it into a mod for the start of Europa Universalis, then repeat the process into Victoria and then Hearts of Iron. You need to set some rules for yourselves, because an experienced player doesn’t need even a third of the CK timeline to demolish all AI threats, but the games are already good roleplaying fodder anyway so you can set rules that play into that. We’re currently about three quarters of the way through Victoria

Outside of those, Noita or Deep Rock Galactic. For a while, those plus a podcast were my go-to “zone out brain off” relaxation, so the hours racked up



They’re actually fairly prolific publishers, though I haven’t personally played much of their catalogue besides the excellent Golf With Your Friends


Seconding Space Marine 2. It’s built for three-player co-op, crossplay works smoothly, and it’s a super satisfying shooter


Outer Wilds (and Echoes of the Eye) technically qualifies with the community’s rules, but I think the answer more in keeping with the spirit of things is Shadow of the Colossus. The Opened Way is the most “fighting a building-sized monster as a normal guy but still winning” piece of music I have heard