Probably Metroid Prime but some days I think it is Dark Souls 1. Both are similar in terms of trying to embody an adventure with strong environmental storh telling.

Dungeon Keeper 2 is good in its own way but definitely lost some of its original magic.

There was an indie series called Overlord (I think, can’t quite recall) which tried to be a Cities: Skyline type homage to Dungeon Keeper. I played it many years ago and it did scratch the same itch so you might be interested.

There is something satisfying about going back and cranking Far Cry 2 or some other older game to max settings / 4k with an extremely modest GPU.

I think the power curve of the 2nd one really hits when you started off with your character in the first game killing rats in a basement.

As an aside I started Seige Of Dragonspear reecently because it was really cheap on Android and I was stuck on a long bus journey. I think it’s actually pretty decent and potentially would be a good starting point if BG1 was too slow. So far the writing has been similar to the other two games albeit not quite on par. There is no tutorial on the mechanics or anything like that though.

Edit: One thing about BG1 is that it can be absolutely fucking brutal in an old school way. I was in Chapter 5 in the eponymous Baldurs Gate and a sidequest triggered where an NPC told me they had poisoned my entire party and I needed to follow them to an alleyway to get the cure. I assumed this was a ruse and my party was going to get mugged/jumped in the alley.

Fast-forward to 4 hours of gameplay later, 2 weeks of in-game time. I was on Chapter 7 on my way to confront Saverok and my entire party keeled over and died. Turned out they actually had been poisoned and none of my stacked saves went far enough back to go and complete the sidequest to avoid the poisoning. So I was totally soft-locked with no way to complete the game by conventional means.

Mixture of old and new - at least Gangstarr are still in there!

This post made me install Vampire Survivors on my phone and it felt like an old flash game I used to play on miniclip during IT classes in school. Some of the assets are completely stolen from OG Castlevania too (I’m sure this has been pointed out before).

Anyway, like 45 mins passed and I have no idea where the time went. I can see this game being good for public transport, waiting rooms, etc.

Yeah it’s a matter of personal taste

I couldn’t stand much of Outer Worlds tbh. Avowed has been a 100% upgrade from my perspective. Not being able to kill NPCs and having no repercussions for stealing just seemed like they were transposing PoE mechanics to the first person perspective.

I really don’t like tactics style gameplay which only a couple of exceptions. Traditional RealTime with Pause is much more appealing to me after playing so much of the old Baldurs Gate games. This is partially why I could never get into the Divinity: OS games and why I’ve been avoiding BG3. I usually just want to instagib scrubs instead of entering a series of elaborate menus.

I just swapped to Ubuntu on my straggler/media server Windows 10 desktop. Have been running Gentoo on another PC for years but never had so much trouble as trying to setup bumblebee with a GTX960 - holy crap nvidia suck so hard. The other PC is all AMD so I was living in blissful ignorance.

I believe they call this “biting the hand that feeds”. I don’t think there are a load of heteronormative bros in there buying funko pops.

Their Luna product seems to be different to Steam. It’s a streaming platform like Playstation Now or the Google Stadia one that got shut down.

The other games that they’ve got on there primarily seem to be DRM-free GOG codes, mixed with some for the Epic store. Maybe they meant they were taking on Steam by boosting their competitors?

“Powerful” probably wouldn’t be the word I’d use given that security updates have stopped. Maybe “foolhardy”?

Watching the review from Gmanlives I was struck by how much the game looked like PoE from a first person perspective. Including the mechanics. Like he was complaining about the objects in the world not reacting and stealing not being a mechanic but that’s exactly how it works in PoE (and Baldurs Gate). Also the spells look like they have moved over 1:1.

Digimon Survive was a great VN from a few years back. Darker than I’d expected. Almost a spiritual successor to Devil Survivor.

Will definitely be dipping into gamepass to try this one out

I’ve been waiting for a sale before grabbing it on xbox. Moderate fan of the original AW and absolutely loved Control. Remedy are amongst the most unique devs out there right now.

NWN2 has the Mask of the Betrayer expansion which is unbelievably good.

A lot of the new Hitman games systems could be transposed into a James Bond game without the disguises and they’d still be compelling. I’m imagining the silent assassin runs where you don’t ever change into a disguise that are possible on certain levels.

I picked up Andromeda for my Series S recently because it was on sale for ~£3 or so. Never played it during its rough launch. I did play a little of the original ME games when I was hanging out with friends back in the day but not a super fan. Although I’ve spent a lot of time on Bioware’s old Infinity Engine games.

I think that game might be underrated. This could just be a patient gamer moment but the writing is pretty good and I’m finding the initial sidequests to be immersive and compelling. Moment to moment gameplay is smooth too, with combat being a lot better than how I remembered the others to be. Interesting playing it when it was pretty much the beginning of the end for Bioware.

Astro Bot from what I’ve seen - and played a bit of - is more similar to Mario Galaxy in level design and that game is maybe the best 3D Mario.

I hope this is on gamepass because I love Obsidian but have been unconvinced by the gameplay I’ve seen so far.

I hope they have crossplay between different OS’s figured out this time. Discovering I couldn’t play Civ 6 with my friends who were using Windows or MacOS was a major factor in me dropping it shortly after release.

He was once a store from around the way… Steam-y

They are cancelling the preorders because the RRP for the game is going to be much higher than when it was initially announced due to game price inflation

One big issue is that military service is mandatory for men only so they feel they are being disadvantaged doing it while their women counterparts are getting degrees and established in the job market. That part seems like it could be solved by making it compulsary for both sexes like Israel does - assuming they want to keep up military service. I don’t see how they can stop given their neighbours.

Is there any strategy for this level apart from kiting the enemies into your line of sight while you are shielded from the centre cube? Maybe the WAD could be tweaked. Cool project though!

Got 5 days left to finish Indiana Jones before the GamePass subscription times out.

The EU and Australia seem to be inching towards serious legislation relating to MTX. Hopefully they can serve as an example.

The government need to get involved and relegate MTX. I agree they are responsible for hosting the platform and developing the systems in the case of CS skins. It’s ugly but Valve are behaving as a rational business actor in this scenario.

Anyone have the archive.org (or any other paywall side-stepping software) link for this article? I don’t want to sign up for NYT,

Balatro is my current go-to game. Not sure if it is patient gamer material since it came out relatively recently but it is cheap and on all platforms. Poker themed maths game.

Xonotic is mint can’t recommend it enough! has replaced Quake 3 for me

They probably have some checklist which has vague definitions of “glamourising” gambling. I reckon this game unwittingly strays into the red tape in its presentation along with the poker theme (like I’ve said elsewhere it’s more a maths game than a poker game). The music and lights despite being atmospheric and ambient probably have some similarities to fruit machine like environments in the sense the music is repetitive and there is flashing visual feedback.

Edit: Should say it’s still B.S. to rate it 18. Just that I can imagine ratings boards can’t apply independent thought/logic.

Kamiya going back to Capcom is huge news

It’s really more like a poker themed maths game. Would probably be good for a kid to pick it up. (They may or may not turn into a poker pro later in life too!)

It’s a shame this gets 18+ while the MTX fuelled FIFA games all get 3+ ratings.

I’ve owned this game for years and I love RTwP combat in games like PoE and Baldurs Gate (first two). You’ve convinced me to give it another try!

I found when they used that same device to explain the ending of Hellblade 2 really unsatisfying.which is a shame because I’d really enjoyed the journey.

I love Obsidian writing and quest design but the gameplay for this one looks bad from the trailers. Like a UE5 asset flip.

I hope I’m wrong. Will play for sure if it’s on gamepass.

The engine itself is clearly optimised to build fortnite and everything else needs to bend it to suit any other style of game.