Been playing a lot of The Finals lately. Normally my time would be spent in Destiny 2, but the current D2 season is gonna last for a looooong time, so I'm not in any hurry to grind it out just yet. But The Finals has absolutely blown me away so far. It can be buggy and unbalanced at times, but it's so damn fun. Demolishing an entire building to bury the cashout station in rubble and prevent a steal is so satisfying.
Embark has also recently said that they've got a lot of updates in the works, so I'm really excited to see how Season 2 plays out.
A bit more Diablo 4, which got a time-limited event this week, but it's not really anything. Just activate shrines and kill monsters for an hour to unlock some cosmetics. Fine by itself, but nothing that's going to make someone play more of the game.
I finally finished Doom 64 after playing it on and off for the last few months. It's alright, but I wasn't hooked like I was with Doom 1 and 2 or Quake 1 and 2.
Some Final Fantasy 2 (Pixel Remaster), but this one is pretty weird (compared to the other early FF games). You don't have the normal leveling system, but all your characters can do anything, but they gain proficiency with whatever weapon they use, if they use magic, what specific spell, if they defended, etc. It's alright, although I prefer normal classes or jobs.
My main problem in the game is, that it's not always really clear where you need to go. About 30 minutes after you start, basically half of the world is open to you (technically even more), and you got like 10 places where you can go. You get some general objectives, but are not really told where to start with them. E.g. at one point you're told to speak with Josef, as if everyone knows the guy, but nobody even says in which town he lives. So you'll just wander around, talk to anyone who'll listen, until you find him (or use the internet). The first game also didn't really tell you where to go, but the world was a lot smaller and where you could go was a lot more limited.
I've also played a bunch of demos from the Steam Next Fest, that's currently going on, but because it's a lot I'll split it into a separate comment. The Next Fest is only running for another day, so if you want to check out some demos, you don't have too much time at this point.
Summerhouse is a builder in the same vein as Townscaper, The Block or Dorfromantik without the scores. You just build a house with whatever parts you want, until you're satisfied. Not really my type of game, so I'll pass on this.
Gatekeeper is an isometric rogue-like, similar to Risk of Rain. You do the typical stuff like killing enemies and upgrading your character, nothing you haven't seen yet. It could be alright, but the demo was a bit samey. I only did one run, but the different levels were all pretty small and looked the same. Maybe things change a bit if you make it further, but I don't know. I'll have to look a bit into it, once it's released.
Mullet Mad Jack is a retro shooter with extremely flashy visuals (I think I heard it described as maximalist). Because of a dystopian cyberpunk setting, where social media controls everything, you only live for 10s unless you kill enemies, so the viewers give you likes for extra time. Then you just run through levels, kick or shoot robots and try to save the girl. I found it extremely unappealing and will not be back for the full release.
Kingsgrave is a top-down, light survival or metroidvania type game, where you control the recently resurrected king and try to rebuild your kingdom. You collect materials, which let you unlock more abilities, so you can get to more parts of the world. This one didn't really grip me, but if I stumble over it again once it's release I might check it out again.
Hexarium is like Mini Metro or similar games, where you connect buildings of the same colors to get points. I might have just been dumb, but it seemed like the game didn't really work properly yet, because I had some seemingly impossible combinations. Like I get a starting point, that's on the very edge of the map, so I can't really build anything or points straight into water, where you're severely limited with what you can build.
Copy Cat is a play-as-a-cat game. In the beginning you're only inside a house and I don't know if it'll open up later. The cat comments on everything (with floating text in the world) as if it's a human and can understand English. The gameplay was also a bit clunky and I don't think I'll be back for more.
Black Dragon Mage is a Survivors-like (dunno what else to call it). It has manual skills and aiming, and as you level up you get more abilities and upgrade existing ones. It was kinda boring, so I'll stick with the games I already have.
Artifact Seeker: Legend of Aurorium is another Survivors-like, better than Black Dragon Mage. It has the typical Chinese Mobile game look to it (don't really know how to describe it). One interesting feature is, after each stage you go to a world map and choose where to go next, à la Slay the Spire. You can choose between combat stages or text events where you can get upgrades. This one is a maybe, but I have a bunch of other games like this already bought, that I have to try at least. before I'll buy more.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a point-and-click adventure game, with isometric 3D environments and 2D cut-out characters, like Paper Mario. In the demo, which is really short, you find clues in single rooms, to solve Mad Libs style puzzles to solve them. So far it's a tiny step up from something like Frog Detective, but I don't know if it gets more complex later. Another one I'll keep an eye on for me.
Pepper Grinder is a 2D platformer, where you play as a girl with a drill arm. You can destroy some parts of the environment, but I guess it's mainly about burrowing through sand, which is like swimming through water in other games, collecting coins, finding secrets, the normal stuff. It's level based, which caught me a bit by surprise, because seemingly all 2D platformers these days are metroidvanias. Not sure about this one yet, maybe later down the line, when I'm more in the mood for a game like this.
Finally, News Tower, a building and management game about a newspaper publisher in the 1930s. You slowly build your tower, get more workers for you, either reporters, typesetters, and whatever else you need, send them to work on stories, so you can print something on Sundays. Could be neat, but not something I'm especially interested in.
Middle Earth: Shadow of War: Good old open world action fun. Kill countless mobs, gather countless collectables. A bit annoyed that subtitles are only implemented on some voice acting. Slightly indisposed that the protagonist (Talion) looks too much like an unkempt Ron Desantis.
Diablo 3: Season 30 - Gave up on the new Monk build since it had very precise stats that I'm currently too lazy to works towards. I'm still progressing with my current build, so I'll keep it for now.
Diablo 4: Season 3 - Played around with the Lunar event that started this week. It was surprisingly easy, and I got through all the rewards in a couple nights.
Last week Snowrunner had an update that moved my truck into storage and held it hostage. After paying the extortion fee ($3) for the tire DLC I got it out, apparently one of the default rims was accidentally marked as dlc? Really weird bug.
Also I started playing Dark Souls II, which is very good but I’m also pretty bad at it
Mostly because it has the best character: a wholesome pro wrestler who helps kids and orphanages. Also only speaks in jaguar and always has his jaguar mask on.
I think fighting games are like religion - the one you’re raised with just makes sense, and all the others just seem like: “why would anyone spend their time with that!?”
I love Tekken. Played 1 a bit. Played 2 a lot. Played 3 a bit. Played Tag and 4 a huge amount at work. Played 5 a bit. 6 not so much. 7 lightly. And now I’m mainlining 8 and absolutely loving it. So I have to concede - after a lifetime sinking time into Tekken of one form or another, you can’t really take my views on it as anything other than completely biased.
But I love it. Every time I’ve tried to play another beat-em-up like SF or MK I’ve just ended up confused. I know, intellectually, that these are good games. But I just don’t understand the… texture of them. SF feels floaty, stuff happens but I don’t really understand what I’m doing or how it affects what I’m seeing on screen. MK feels oddly stilted, the way the characters move feels artificial, slow.
Only Tekken feels… real. Just the right amount of nimble. When I get hit, I know why I got hit. I can predict shit, and feel good when I block a load of stuff. I feel like only with Tekken can I worry less about the controller and more about the strategy, and the mind games.
My guess is that they just want to separate GOG and their game accounts from each other because they are easier to manage that way. I think in legal sense GOG is still a separate corporate entity even though it’s owned by CD Projekt.
They are legally separate entities, but why should that affect customers? Why are CDPR games no longer being sold on the GOG store? This almost would be like if Valve stopped selling Half Life on Steam.
I don’t think it has anything to do with being “easier to manage”. I think the corporate structure is purely for financial reasons. Valve never spun up a second business for Steam.
I also suspect it has something to do with the fact that GOG is a staunchly DRM free platform. It sounds like either CDPR want to sell games with DRM (which means future titles similar to Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and Baldur’s Gate 3 would no longer have a DRM-free option, as CDPR would simply have them on their main store rather than GOG), or CDPR want to include DRM in their own games.
I understand your concern based on how corporations tend to run these days, but this is a lot of speculation. It’s good to be skeptical though.
My guess is that they want to use a single account across more services unrelated to GOG, akin to the way google SSO works for gmail, YouTube, drive, etc. If the account is owned by a subsidiary that might not be possible for other subsidiaries to use the same account per data regulation rules.
I’d like to think I’m not so much speculating, but rather concerned about what this might mean. There’s certainly no apparent reason why splitting CDPR games away from GOG would be good for consumers.
My guess is that they want to use a single account across more services unrelated to GOG
The specific reasoning they’ve given is pretty clear:
You are receiving this email due to your use of online features, including Cross Progression and My Rewards, in CD PROJEKT RED games, as well as your participation in platforms like the CD PROJEKT RED Forums.
None of these things have a clear advantage in being separated from GOG. GOG is owned by CDPR, GOG is a CDPR subsidiary. CDPR have full authority to dictate how their games are sold on the GOG platform. The only unique thing about GOG is the DRM-free position.
By separating CDPR games from GOG, they can separate CDPR games from the DRM-free position, without facing the inevitable backlash that doing so would normally face. Then, newer CDPR games won’t be bound by the GOG philosophy, while GOG can die off somewhat naturally and without such significant backlash. This could be seen as commercially preferable over the current situation for a publicly traded company such as CDPR.
I am making assumptions, but that is the very nature of future predictions. I ask if you could make any other assumption that really challenges mine.
Their games might end up on both, but when it comes to a new 3rd party game being put on CDPR store with DRM or GOG store without DRM, which do you think will happen? Long term, do you think GOG would survive if CDPR shift their focus to another store?
It’s not really the same as Rockstar Launcher and Steam, because Rockstar don’t own Steam.
They are legally separate entities, but why should that affect customers?
Because they are not doing it because of customers, they are more likely doing it for themselves. It’s easier to manage things on a corporate level when the data is also separated similarly as their companies are.
I’m not confusing anything here. For clarity, CPD is the parent company, CDPR is a department within the parent company that develops games. The two are basically synonymous.
What I’m doing is inferring that their statement “online services including…” is in no way an exhaustive list, and directly implies that other things are migrating also. Furthermore, when I logged into GOG Galaxy I could no longer shop for new games (not just CDPR games, but recent games from other publishers - only old titles were available), which further leant into the idea that games were being removed from the GOG store. I’ve since checked gog.com and they’re still there, though.
In any case, even if it doesn’t happen right away this move absolutely is a step towards CDPR games not being listed on the GOG store and potentially even coming with DRM.
I’ve created a support ticket with them asking for further details about the change.
Curious about something, I installed Dragon’s Dogma since I had it from sometime it was given out free. It wasn’t what I thought it was. I must’ve confused it with this other game because I’m actually getting into DD here. Still no clue what the name of the game I was confusing it for is though.
That’s the thing; I’m not even sure they had a similar name. I had thought that Dragon’s Dogma was this Monster Hunter knock-off built on the Source engine. I didn’t care much for it so just wrote it off until I saw a video on DD2 which also showed the first game and made me go “huh… That’s not what I remember.” lol
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Aktywne