Cheaping out on optimization is one thing, telling customers to basically eat shit if they have a problem with it is… something that‘s not gonna have any major consequences nowadays, I guess lol

What a time we live in

I‘ve decided it‘s time to catch up in the gacha games I‘m playing, all stories have been pretty good so I‘m having a good time in Genshin/Zenless/WuWa

All of them could do with native res and 60 fps, I hope that‘s not something that needs serious engineering power…

I‘ve been playing Legend of Grimrock which had been collecting dust on my account for over a decade, and I can now confidently say that these kinda games are not for me lol

Others: Hopefully a new Mario or Zelda game, that‘d be so hype!

Me: Hopefully Switch 2 updates for all Xenoblades, that‘d be so hype!

(And Fire Emblem please lol)

The appeal is that it‘s a great game with beautiful art that runs on just about anything for an affordable price with no modern fuckery attached.

But if metroidvanias aren‘t your thing, it‘s just not your thing. I‘m also not super obsessed with them and played the first game a fair amount but not that much; I do, however, get why people just want to be hyped for something that doesn‘t spit in their face in return for once.

Alan Wake

Putting the finishing touches on Alan Wake (the really old one). I‘m not much of a horror guy (and it‘s not much of a horror game), so mainly the story kept me going lol. Probably just gonna watch a playthrough of 2 to know how it continues.

Peak

Otherwise, I‘ve been playing some Peak with my gf and I really like it. The generated levels keep it fresh, the swap out only every 24 hrs gives ample opportunity to get familiar with the mountain. I wish it had DLSS and/or FSR though, the performance is abysmal for what it‘s rendering, the integrated „scaler“ looks pretty poor. My PC‘s screaming when I play this for no apparent reason lol

I‘m gonna try to avoid reading any of this or the comments cause I have it in lib unplayed and don‘t wanna spoil myself…

BUT I have a question: I‘m really bad at handling horror games, Alan Wake had me uncomfortably tense with enemies being able to sneak up on me and it’s arguably not even much of a horror game. Is this game playable for me?

I‘m gonna play Outpath when I have time solo and Peak with my gf. And I‘ll probably randomly boot up half a dozen other games if Outpath loses me.

I‘m gonna continue Salt & Sanctuary this weekend, which is basically 2D Dark Souls, like, heavily inspired by Dark Souls.

Other than that, I‘ve picked Outpath back up which is Minecraft graphics combined with Forager gameplay, I suppose? It‘s hard for me to describe.

Maybe I‘ll start Peak with my gf if she wants to. She‘s kinda scared cause she read it‘s hard, I have no clue, I‘m going in blind lol

With levelup‘s 0.8 out of 10.0 there seems to be a typo they probably wanna fix

I think it was Satisfactory, started and finished it this year and it‘s a big game. Any game outside of Steam I can‘t see the playtime so I wouldn‘t know.

The original was one of my personal top 3 stories, really captivated me. Problem is that I still remember the twists, and 95% of the game‘s charm is the plot to me so I won‘t get a remaster.

I envy anyone who gets to experience this for the first time with uptodate graphics though.

But I do hope they touch up those iceskate-y run animations, they look super awkward compared to the rest shown lol

I hope it‘s everything fans hope for, they‘ve had to wait for too long

Not OP. I certainly think it is slower, especially with the absence of 200cc, but I also don‘t make much use of grinding/walldriving so I‘m likely a lot slower than I could be. I just generally like MK8 more since a lot of the tracks really have that „this is a filler track between tracks“ feeling to them for me. YMMV.

It happened to me towards the end as well, but thankfully reloading my savefile got me back on track. Your comment made me aware that just cause everything looks bizarre it‘s not necessarily intended and saved me from suffering the same fate lol

I‘ve picked Manifold Garden back up and man… this game is so utterly unique, I recommend anyone give it a shot next sale. Even if you‘re not into puzzle games, just seeing what it does visually will give you a unique experience, I reckon.

I‘ve finished New Super Lucky‘s Tale and while it might be good for like 8y/os, it‘s painfully mid even if I ignore the glacing cringe. I‘ll give it that the DLC challenge levels were fun, but yeah, those are like 15% of the game.

Otherwise I‘m slowly crawling through DiRT Rally 2.0, I‘m not a big fan of RX but I‘ve grown to like the rallies a lot. And fuck cars with rear drive (is that what it‘s called?), these are a guaranteed eight spinouts for me.

I‘m gonna try to pick another one of my started games (64 left) back up tonight, dunno which yet. It‘s my big goal to eventually™ cut that pile in half, simply because I‘ve realized that I kept buying and starting new games while slowly losing the plot on games I‘ve started and liked which lead to me never touching them again cause I was midway through them with no idea as to who, why, where, what, and how (Yakuza Like A Dragon etc.). The ones I have no fond memories of will stay in that pile though (Darkest Dungeon, not my thing and Idk why I thought it‘d be).

Can you elaborate? Would jacking up the graphics, animations, and sound mess with the atmosphere? It‘s been a hot minute since I‘ve played it so I‘m not sure what the issue would be.

That‘s a nice catch I‘m gonna spread at any opportunity in the future

One has to be Crusader Kings III considering the amount of time that died in that game. I did Lingua Franca (world domination) when mods and savescumming voided achievements, my whole empire fell apart literally 20 seconds after I achieved world domination lol, could barely hold it together to achieve the feat.

The other one is probably Rocket League. Low skill floor, skyhigh skill ceiling, wonderfully designed esports game. If you could still freely go in and out of casual games, I‘d probably still play it. But I peaked and don‘t feel the need to play ranked anymore and casuals started to feel like ranked.

After these two I can probably name ten more but I can‘t say which takes a top 3. League of Legends, Counterstrike 1.6, Battlefield 3, HITMAN, Dark Souls II (yep lol, I could probably draw a map of this game from memory), NIOH 1/2, Monster Hunter World, Sleeping Dogs, Muse Dash, all these games killed countless hours with fun, but it‘s hard to put one above the other. Apart from League of Legends, that one takes the rear.

If that‘s the case then I guess I shouldn‘t be as sceptic cause I liked Infinite quite a bit

Aren‘t the original devs gone or am I misremembering?

And „community-based engagement business“ is…?

I remember them coping how it‘s actually good that they‘re owned by IGN now not too long ago lol

Of course this is good and I welcome it

Yup, best controller design for my hands. If only the quality of its components wasn‘t so crap. Drifting sticks, squeaky triggers, double pressing buttons, I had it all. I thought an elite controller would be of better quality, got one, and the plastic of the right shoulder button straightup broke within a year. No dropping, no throwing, it just broke from normal use lol

The form‘s great, the buttons (when they work), are great, the sticks (when they work) are great. It just doesn‘t last long past warranty. Thankfully they‘re on sale every year for like 35 bucks but I‘d rather they were a tad more expensive with better quality components… I guess they don‘t mind people having to buy more of them either though…

I think it‘s so dominant cause it‘s cheap and easy to make, and it runs on anything. I don‘t see it go anywhere anytime soon. But I hope some AA studios will try their hands on this style.

How high can you go in the settings while still getting 55-60 fps at native res on the Deck?

Assassin‘s Creed Unity

I‘ve complained it the past about Shadow of War that I felt like I had to fight Talon to get him to go where I want him to. Now that I’m close to 100%ing ACU, I want to apologize to Talon cause ACU has the most sluggish, slow, and imprecise movement I‘ve ever wrestled with in these kinda games. Really made me realize how good I had it in Shadow of War lol. Every enemy just screaming at me on sight for no reason and tryna pick a fight with me when there‘s 50 people around me is also getting annoying. I think I love these games mainly for their sight-seeing and podcast side-activity capabilities now (collecathon). And revolutionary Paris is definitely a good sight-seeing location.

DiRT Rally 2.0

I‘m more of an arcade racer fan, but I‘m trying to challenge myself a bit with this one. I sometimes don‘t understand why I‘m spinning out, but I‘m hanging in there. The goal is another 100%, we‘ll see how far I can go! It‘s a pretty good rally simulation game, for anyone who doesn‘t know. It‘s also dirt cheap (hah).

Octopath Traveler

Hardly playing it atm but man, the theme song speaks to me, what a good piece. I‘m done with all chapter 1s, currently following a guide to pick up the missables before I go into the next chapters. There‘s something cozy about voiced pixel graphics JRPG storytelling to me. To anyone who‘s never heard of this game: Imagine old Final Fantasy titles, still pixel graphics, still turn-based, but with a few modern twists and the graphics pop out like a children picture book with modern effects. Full 60 at native res at max graphics on the Deck.

I love the visuals so much… I wish there were way more games out there looking like that, but at best it‘s (great) cell-shaded characters/monsters in a clay/plastic-looking world nowadays.

P5R is a reminder to me that I should be patient. Got it for 40 bucks way back, 2 hours played. I‘ll play it eventually, no doubt, but I didn‘t need it then lol

This month‘s choice is stacked

I enjoyed the DC mod more which might be the reason why BF3 was my peak 🤔 Did you maybe like BFV then?

Idk how much it fits into your understanding of racing games, but one of my favorite vibing games of all time is Slipstream.

My favorite traditional racing game is the old DiRT 2. I‘m just not much of a sim guy, I dislike having to fight the car too much, it starts to feel like I’m trying to steer a washing machine on ice. I am challenging myself with DiRT Rally 2.0 (yes, confusing) though, not sure how far I‘ll get.

Valve is self-publishing so technically… 🤔

I don‘t even have a disk drive anymore. I prefer digital nowadays since I like to swap around games and don‘t wanna have to swap the media every time as well. It kinda bothers me with my Switch, but I still prefer physical there so I can resell.

In an ideal world I‘d like a physical copy of a complete game on my shelf where I don‘t have to use the physical medium to play it but can fall back to that in case a platform‘s failing or I want to resell it… However all that would work.

In the current reality it‘s just Steam all the way for convenience‘s sake. Gabe was right, it‘s all about service quality. If Steam ever pulls the rug from under my feet, I’ll basically have no games anymore though lol

I loved Battlefield.

For me it started to go downhill with BF1, although it was still a good game, it already started trying to be a movie and not the „put C4 onto jeep, plop into jeep, drive jeep to enemy, plop out if jeep, boom“ kinda jamboree that I loved. Now it was all about getting spammed with immersive animations that just broke the flow for me. At least hardcore servers were still very enjoyable for me.

Then BFV came around and with it more animation spam on top of absolute terrible visual clarity where you had to stand still for a couple seconds and scan a room to really be sure no one‘s lying on their back in a corner (obviously you‘re long dead by then). Oftentimes I got shot by a camper and even in the killcam I couldn‘t even see the guy. As if that‘s not enough, they introduced clown skins that made you wonder if that person‘s on your side or not. Now it’s not x uniform soldiers against x uniform soldiers anymore, there‘s superheroes and supervillains running around. I hardly even played this one.

Then BF2042 came and it‘s just Apex Legends hamfisted into a BF frame as far as I‘m concerned. I didn‘t even get this until they trashed it for 2 bucks and played for like 2 hours since.

BF3 was peak, BF4 was good, BF1 was alright, then a whole lotta disappointment. I‘ll never forget the 24/7 Back to Karkand Rush server in BF3, community servers rock. Good times, sad greed made it go to shit.

I can second that, it‘s a good sim for what I can tell anyway. (Although also EA now, see OP‘s requirements)

it had a lot of backtracking which was annoying

…but very immersive on the treadmill, no? LOL

…I‘ll show myself out

You probably mean Dirt Rally 2, I meant the original DiRT 2, which is pretty arcade-y and easy.

(The one that had Games for Windows LIVE (yep lol))

I‘m happy for fans to get more, but the franchise never managed to grab me. And it‘s really hard to explain why since I don‘t have anything bad to say about the games I‘ve played. I guess they play it so safe that they‘re bland and unmemorable to me. Like it‘s less an engaging work of art and more a piece of homework by the book that‘s trying hard to be inoffensive and completely risk-averse to not upset the teacher.

But that’s just my opinion anyway, and not every game has to be for me.

Edit: There was no DLC bs in the games I‘ve played though, just complete games. I wanna explicitely praise that.