Even Arkane alone at that time wouldn’t be considered indie. They had done a few contract jobs for major releases, like CoD, before developing Dishonored.
I bought Wrestlequest and You Suck at Parking. The former you probably won’t vibe with if you aren’t a big pro wrestling and maybe RPG fan. The latter is fun but at ten bucks on sale still feels a smidge overpriced
I finally got tired of Melvor after like a year and the first DLC. I guess I could see myself going back and doing the 2nd one at some point but my interest hasn’t been there since I put it down some time last year.
Even before that though I think that township thing was a huge misstep. I’m all for trying some new stuff as a dev and not everyone’s going to be happy but cramming some weird town management sim into the incremental rpg genre never really made much sense to me.
Township does seem rather tacked on I agree, outside of the tasks there isn’t much to do and it doesn’t reward you enough to justify the money sink. Quite frankly, there’s a lot in the game that seems rather pointless outside of getting to lvl 99 (120 with DLC), but I guess that’s the point.
I like Honkai Star Rail, it is from the developers of Genshin Impact, but unlike Genshin, it is turned based so the grind is automatic(plus has others quality of life features). So i only have to actively play the actual content.
I think the production values are very high, especially for a mobile game. The story and characters are decent. The english localization(it’s a chinese game) is probably the best there is. And finally the music is insane. Hoyoverse is a music company that just happens to make videogames on the side.
What really blew my mind about Star Rail, was the fight against the final boss of the ice planet(second world, after the tutorial one). That was some anime good shit, definitely one of the hypest gaming moments ever and i have played thousands of games. The music they used and how it synced with the gameplay, perfect, absolutely perfect. You can watch this vod of a giant weeb playing the final fight, if you dont care about spoilers or dont intent do play the game(25mins in starts the hype part, though it is worth watching the entire video for context).
The space china world was kinda mediocre but the new Dream/Inception/Las Vegas world is pretty cool. Here is the trailer for this world(this song would have easily won Eurovision this year)
I guess the most impressive thing about the game is how much content and care has been put into this game. You have pc/console AAA GaS games, which produce very little new seasonal content, no cool trailers, etc. And you have this, till a few years ago random, chinese developer producing high quality content and advertising all the time, they just never miss. And of course now they can do that, they make a billion+ dollars a year but even with Genshin, they are just too good, not just for mobile games but as games.
My favorite publishing house is probably Bethesda. I came to this realization the other day when thinking of what my favorite types of games are. Just so happens Bethesda has published nearly all of them in recent years. Arkane is my favorite dev because they’ve kept immersive sims alive with titles like Dishonored 1+2/Prey/Deathloop. ID software/Machine Games both keep the tradition of the classic shooter alive while bringing them into the modern era, games like Wolfenstein (The Old Blood, 1+2), and DOOM. The only games I don’t really care for out of Bethesda are their recent RPG games, I believe they’ve peaked at Fallout New Vegas. But with the upcoming Indiana Jones game being developed by MachineGames, I think they’ll deliver another fun first person adventure. They also quietly released HiFi Rush last year from Tango Gameworks (who also did the awesome Evil Within 2 game) and that oozed PS2 era video games quite amazingly.
The most recent developer who has crept onto that list in recent years for me is definitely FROMSOFTWARE. No need to really explain here, they’ve made a handful of classic dungeon delving masterpieces with the Souls series. Then went onto Bloodborne and Sekiro, most recently Elden Ring (which was the first full game I ever beat from them).
I’ll also echo Remedy, and do an honorable mention to 4A Games (highly recommend the Metro series for those into First Person Shooters, some amazing atmosphere in those games still). Double Fine too, with the recent Psychonauts 2, they aren’t super prolific in recent years but that game was amazing. I think the industry needs more creativity like Psychonauts 2 offered and what the studio offers in general. Capcom in recent years has been on fire too the upcoming Dragons Dogma 2 looks like it could become a classic if it’s as good as all these previews make it seem to be.
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