Ahhh ok. I’m using a controller at the moment for accessibility reasons, but I’ll definitely look into doing that when I can again! Maybe it’ll show if I just idle a couple seconds over the selection
Right on 🤙🏻 I figured there had to be with how accessible the controller options truly are - I haven’t been able to check since my initial response. I should get to relatively soon though! Option on the controller is: select --> enable help tools
Buying late also has the advantage that if the game is a technical disaster at first, you can wait some months until most of the bugs have been fixed and then still buy it and enjoy it anyways. Then you don’t have to go through the frustrating experience of trying to play a game that crashes or locks your progress due to bugs every half an hour.
Especially if it’s a console game. If it’s PC I can typically manually edit things to fix them, but consoles are locked down. I still remember Fallout 3 when I finished the Operation Anchorage DLC it also marked some other random quest I never started as complete. Realizing I could fix that bug with a console command on PC (ironic lol) made me not wanna play on consoles unless I really have to.
This applies even when the game isn’t a technical disaster. All games have bugs, and many will not be found until they’re released to the public. And then most games have quirks that you as a player don’t agree are good things, and mostly there will be mods to fix those. So waiting is always a good idea, no matter the state of the game at launch.
Yeah, basically nobody does actual beta testing anymore, been like that for at least a decade.
They say they do, but they’re either lying or lauguably incompetent at it, my rule of thumb is bare minimum 3 months for ‘day one’ patches, more realistically, 6 months for them to actually finish the last 10 or 20% of the game they initially rushed out the door not including.
The patient thing also sadly/hilariously allows you to avoid the increasingly more common multiplayer game that just fucking sucks actually and more or less tanks 95% of its player count before the 6 month mark, or has some massive controversial (in terms of actual game features or lack thereof) thing going on.
Correct me if I’m wrong: they all complied because action from the payment processors was imminent, and GOG and Itch have both made public statements about next steps that Valve hasn’t, which doesn’t mean that Valve isn’t taking next steps. Did I miss anything?
Yeah unlike other big companies, Valve still has some trust to rely on. Let’s wait for what they’re saying and doing first.
Also, the quickest path to success will always be to reignin the payment processors. Which should be a no-brainer anyway; they should have no influence on content decisions.
Disco Elysium? More or less entirely conversation-driven RPG about an alcoholic cop who drunk himself to submission so hard he forgot who he is, hence developing him back with skillpoints. Off the top of my head there’s like one combat situation which you can talk around if you’re so inclined.
Otherwise, it’s been said many times that “Planetscape: Torment” is similar … ish. Not the setting, but mechanics, apparently you can entirely go through the game without combat - but that’s not to say there’s not going to be bodies - or so I’ve been told, haven’t played the game to completion, only dabbled the beginnings.
So, these suggestions are with grain of salt, obvs. But afaik both are pretty high up on the rpg shelf.
Grain of salt? Disco Elysium is the perfect example and Torment would have been a better game without combat. I‘d like to add Citizen Sleeper. I‘m a bit tired of RPG where combat often is the only or favoured option.
I like a lot of middle evolutions better than final, Charmeleon included. Wartortle with those wing-ears, the Nidoran middle forms are pretty good. Zubat is better than Golbat. Meowth has more going on than Persian which is just any regular cat from Earth. Voltorb is better than Electrode, but in fairness they're both just Pokéballs--I always thought Electrode should have been modeled after a Great Ball or something.
Are you serious!? First of all, Haunter is indeed S-tier design, but so is Gengar???
Here’s a list of a FEW middle evos who have far better designs than their first/last evos: Wartortle, Dragonair, Arctibax, Dolliv, Rhydon, Dottler — I could go on….!
Am ready, willing, and able to fight to the death over these opinions, so come at me!!!
Going from Haunter to Gengar, they added arms and legs and big square teeth. All of which are functionally unnecessary for a ghost. And the overall aesthetic went from “scary” to “goofy”.
It sucks that this is going around too. Because no matter what the “right” choice is the devs are still gonna have to see what should have just been their fun project get thrown around in gaming politic hell
Everyone seems to be more interested in the latest techbro feud so I wanted to highlight what he said about Unknown Worlds staff not being given specifics on what their compensation will be. The statement was quite nebulous on that.
Gods, I hate this culture. Make concrete, public promises to your staff to follow through on your acquisition deal? Nah, can’t have that. Open yourself up to liability by throwing the former execs under the bus, in detail? No problem!
It’s horror in the sense that Bioshock was horror, but much less so. There are some areas with ‘tension’ that you pretty quickly become accustomed to, just as you would in a game where there is a ‘progression’ of areas where each area you move into is quite difficult at first until you get the resources and build the new items from that area.
I highly recommend it on a vr device if possible, but to everyone who has played it knows, it has its moments. But its not as wrote as a run of the mill horror game, i may have given the game a disservice labeling it as such.
I swear, the best way to experience Helldivers 2’s community is to just be decent in games with randoms, maybe watch CommissarKai’s videos (do not go into the comments section) for tips on teamplay, and absolutely positively do not venture into the steam forums, the discord, or any other big discussion forum centered around the game because it w i l l be a cesspit, unfortunately. The Steam forums have the usual toxic trolls, but the Discord (and other hubs) is usually having furious arguments over buffs, nerfs, what is meta, what isn’t, what should be done what shouldn’t be and so on. For a silly little PvE co-op power fantasy game.
I’m not sure if Deep Rock Galactic has this problem, I’ve played it and it all seemed pretty positive but I never got into the game as much as I did HD2.
I take it you’ve never had the displeasure of being dropped into a PlayStation lobby? Lots of TKers and Kickers on PS. I don’t get the same from Steam players.
I’m like this with Genshin. I’ve played it for almost 2k hours, love the exploration gameplay, environment graphics and music, but the monetisation system is extremely predatory, and the character designs and writing are bullshit, so overall I still wouldn’t recommend it to others, or only with heavy caveats. But it really scratches my exploration itch, so I’ll keep playing it myself 🤷
Usually happens when a game was good initially, but then publishers get greedy and push RMT/pay-to-win/freemium features to please investors.
Maybe not a great example, but I played Eve Online for many years, and while the game is actually very playable with RMT (it feels fucking great to destroy somebody’s virtual property they paid 20$ to acquire), it kinda got out of hand and diminished the thousands of hours I put into the game.
I read one recently that complained the devs didn’t listen to them about this one extremely specific sounding request, and therefore cannot recommend it.
The review was at like 1400 hours, and they played 1900 hours.
Which means for another 500 hours, they continued.
I think i already commented on this somewhere else, but a lot of bethesda games are like that for me. The vanilla game is kind of shit, but with a lot of mods it can kind of be hammered into something I enjoy. it’s still kind of bad, but sometimes you just want to eat junk food. I wouldn’t recommend someone go to McDonalds, but sometimes it’s just right there and it’s easy.
Can you find this person whom wandered off into the ashlands? They went east-ish.
I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit in the Construction Kit to find out where in Vivec’s name I had to go this time. Usually it turned out I just barely missed the person or location I had to go before starting an hourlong search.
That’s what I like about the game. The NPCs tell you where to go to the best of their ability, and you follow to the best of yours. I like it a hell of a lot more than quest markers.
There is at least one occasion where NPCs just straight up lie to you in quest directions though. I can’t think of it off the top of my head but I remember it existing because I complained about it on a forum.
On one hand - great worldbuilding! “Local dumbass gives you bad directions” is a funny and memorable point on top of what might otherwise be a forgettable side quest. On the other hand, I spent the better part of four hours looking for whatever egg mine or ancestral tomb or whatever it was he asked me to find before getting fed up and having UESP tell me “lol no actually it’s off in this complete other direction”, and I’m pretty sure I assassinated that NPC after I turned in his quest.
Yeah I remember some fuckin guy said you can find the herb east of balmora. Que an hour long search and epic journey for the ages only to finally read a guide that says the guy lied
Jesus, the finding people thing was tough, but finding the quest item that I had already looted from a grave and either dropped or sold to a random merchant? Game ending, man.
This was me lmao. On my first playthrough of Morrowind as a teenager I dicked around and did everything except the main quest for ages. Around level 18 I decided to actually progress the main quest. Hasphat, check. Arkngthand, no sweat. Talk to Sharn Gra-Muzgob, she says to fetch the Skull of Llevule Andrano. Cool, go to Andrano’s tomb, looks kind of familiar. Where is the Skull of Llevule Andrano? Cause it sure ain’t here in his tomb. Whoopsie.
Never found the skull, never progressed the quest, had to start a new character to actually experience the main story. I wonder how many potential Nerevarines failed to ascend due to missing minor quest items. Wish I could ask em that inside the Cavern of the Incarnate.
I play Fantasy Critic with some friends. We allow remakes in our league but not remasters. This one counts as a remake for purposes of this site, with a flag on it to note that it was contentious. This game definitely blurs some lines on some definitions.
I don’t know. As far as I can tell, it’s only searchable for the current calendar year, and we can view games we had on our roster in the same league in previous years. No one had any of those games on their roster. The site differentiates between remasters, remakes, and reimaginings, with a reimagining being something like Resident Evil 2 or Final Fantasy VII Remake. We used to not allow remakes, but we changed the rules for our league starting last year (personally, I voted against it, but I was outvoted). The league commissioner can always override a decision that the site makes when categorizing a game.
I managed to find aoe3 and aom on the site by using a site-filtered Google search. Couldn’t find 1 or 2, but with both of those that I found being “remake”, I suspect the two I didn’t find would be the same.
It’s interesting, and perhaps highlights how vague the line is between remake and remaster. AoM I can see being called a remake (at a bit of a stretch), but 2 & 3 are pretty solidly remasters in my mind, due to being entirely in the original engine with just a bit of new QoL features and improved graphics added.
Yes, it is fantasy sports but with video games. You draft games, and your points are determined by their score on Open Critic. Over 70 gains points, under 70 loses points. Every point over 90 is worth double. The way my friends and I structure our league, we have one counter pick during the draft, and the counter picker gets the inverse of the points of that game; so if I have a friend who drafts Kirby Air Riders, and I counter pick it, and it scores 67, my friend loses 3 points and I gain 3 points. If I counter pick a game that scores positive points, I lose those points instead.
The only game on my roster that has released so far is Knights in Tight Spaces, which only got me 6 points (I aim for about 13 points per game), because it scored a 76 on Open Critic, and I was perhaps a bit too risky when I drafted Pony Island 2: Panda Circus, because I got counter picked on it, and it doesn’t have a release date, so I might be stuck with a game that scores 0 points due to not releasing this year.
But you don’t always know about every release a year in advance (I mean for games that weren’t announced yet at the time of your draft)… Are there “seasons”?
Lol sorry, I’ve just never heard of this and I’m intrigued.
Correct, you don’t know that. You can speculate on releases, like I did with Pony Island 2, and get counter picked as a punishment for the risk. As long as it’s in the site’s database, it’s fair game. I drafted “Unannounced 3D Mario Game” this year, but then I picked up “Unannounced 3D Donkey Kong Game” after the draft for 1 in-game dollar (no one else put in a bid for it), as a hedge, since the rumor was that either a Mario or a Donkey Kong game would be made by the Mario Odyssey team for the Switch 2 launch. No one counter-picked Mario, so I’m allowed to drop it, and the Donkey Kong entry automatically updated to Bananza. The “season” is a calendar year. We do our draft early in January, and typically the first release of the year will be like halfway through the month, and the score that each game earns is whatever score it has at the stroke of midnight on January 1st.
Because we don’t know every release a year in advance, A) this game got a lot harder starting back in 2022, because that’s when game marketing cycles got way shorter, and B) some of the best reviewing games of 2025 probably won’t even be announced until this coming June.
They have their own database. If there’s a release or a rumor they don’t know about, you can suggest one, but they ask you to cite your sources. If it’s got a Steam page and you provide that link, they’ll basically add it right away, which is what happened when I got Total Chaos added. Fantasy Critic also gives league commissioners a lot of power to house rule just about anything.
I got the same survey. The ones that they definitely do not want to do, if they value their reputation, are things like “increased cloud save storage (that’s still probably less than what Steam offers)” and things that they took away, like 1.0 installers. But some of the other options look to be more squarely aimed at the enthusiasts of the preservation program that this subscription is designed to financially support, as well as one or two actually good features like legal account sharing. Hopefully they go down that route instead.
It's on par with Steam, I think. You get like 200 megs per product. I know because my Witcher 3 install is above that and it's annoying. That wouldn't be a dealbreaker as a subscription benefit, I don't think.
With the rest I do agree.
I can tell they're struggling and have been for a while. It isn't easy to compete with Steam, and the thing that would have done it (having DRM'd new games in the service) was voted down in a similar survey some time ago.
I would not be against some Patreon-like crowdsourced solution for behind the scenes stuff and prioritization rights. GOG, or something like it MUST exist. Steam is bad enough with their current dominant position, it can't be the sole remaining option in this market.
I would much prefer to be able to give them more money in exchange for more games, though. I am constantly frustrated by how often some indie game is only available on Steam, and I've started buying things full price on GOG but waiting for sales on Steam as a matter of policy.
Is that where it is now? I haven't looked at the documentation in an age. I think most stay lower because ultimately cloud storage is a cross-platform concern and different first parties have different requirements. Plus you want to keep it under control anyway. At any rate it's not a huge concern and other services like PSN or Nintendo Online already charge for it, so... not a dealbreaker as long as the base implementation stays free.
What makes BG3 so great is that it doesn‘t just have voice acting, it has full acting. The actor of Astarion worked for 4 years on it and claimed it was the equivalent to shooting 4 seasons of a TV show. It‘s a huge scope that almost nobody can or want to afford. I mean those studios who can just don‘t take that part very seriously and are eyeing with simply opting to use AI instead. I doubt it will ever be recreated, maybe not even by Larian themselves.
You might be interested in the videos made by Champutee, a one-armed gamer who has done several experiments with both genres and controllers to continue enjoying gaming.
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