Is this the much talked about Steam integration? I’d doubt it (what manufacturer will let you use their service to give money to another platform?!), but…I do hope I am wrong!
It’s not just a throwaway line. It’s something they’ve been building up to in their public statements for a while now. The direction the wind is blowing in a lot of countries right now is that of breaking down walled gardens, often times via legislation. Not only is this a matter of them accepting this as an inevitability, but none of their own walled gardens are responsible for their own success. Yes, they’ve got a Windows Store, but it doesn’t make the kind of money that Apple’s does. Their competitive advantage is that they can say, “look how nice and open we are,” while Sony goes about business as usual. Meanwhile, in a world where the next Xbox is expected to just be a PC, they can legally play the Windows version of God of War on a machine called “Xbox”, and there’s nothing Sony can do to stop it. All of that exclusivity money they spent is worthless. And the appeal to an Xbox is that it plays all of those games and is a cheap entry point for Game Pass. The part of this most recent PR statement that throws me for a loop is how they’re getting the full backward compatibility with old Xbox games, because that’s the only piece of evidence that points to them making a traditional console and not a Windows PC in disguise.
As for what I’ve been playing, I made good progress in a number of games lately. I finally hit the turn in Devil May Cry 4. Even knowing roughly what it would be through cultural osmosis, it’s every bit as disappointing to get to the halfway point of the game and realize they’re just going to make you go through the exact same levels as the first half of the game but backwards. It’s sort of like making New Game + mandatory in order to see the ending.
I also played a number of quests in Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and it looks like I’m at about the halfway point in the main story. The biggest problem with the game so far has been anything relating to its stealth systems, as they don’t give you much to go on, and the punishment is severe, but the story is pulling me along, and I finally leveled my way out of most of the game’s tedium.
And here or there, I’ve been playing some more missions in Borderlands 3. The upgrade in game feel is hard to overstate. The writing’s not great, but it’s not so unbearable like its reputation would lead me to believe. The skill trees are much better, the shooting feels much better, the quality of life is vastly improved; all keeping me pumped for the fourth game in a few months. The DRM situation isn’t my favorite, but I’ll deal with it.
EDIT: Breaking GOG news, Perfect Dark: Devil May Cry 1-4 are now available via GOG’s Good Old Games program. Of course they did this as I’m nearing the end of my journey through this series, but combined with Breath of Fire IV, Dino Crisis, and Resident Evil showing up on the service lately, I take this to mean they’ve got a good partnership with Capcom right now. I emulated DMC1-3 when I played through those lately, because I heard there were weird artifacts when playing the Steam versions through Proton, but maybe the fixed up GOG versions fare better.
I like the feeling of getting stronger and coming back to previously inaccessible places. Pretty much only play games on Steam.
I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone mention Hollow Knight yet. I won’t claim it on my list since I haven’t finished it yet, but it seems to be popular.
Commandos to me is the start of a different lineage of real-time tactical stealth games, which goes on to include Desperados, Shadow Tactics, and Shadow Gambit (yes, most of those were made by the same team).
Outside of the OGRE-alikes (FO Tactics, FF Tactics, Disgea, and so on) some other options for tactical games that are a little different:
Nexus: The Jupiter Incident - sort of a 4X game mixed with tactics, or like Homeworld with a lot fewer units
Myth: The Fallen Lords (and sequels) - classic pre-Halo Bungie titles that mix RPG and strategy. Somewhat defining for the RTS genre too.
UFO: Aftershock and sequels - a series that tried to revive XCom before Firaxis rebooted it. Not as good, but pretty interesting and fun, a little easier than old school xcom but not as polished as the newer ones.
Cannon Fodder - a UK classic, very arcadey but very fun and lighter than all these other “serious” games
To me it was the 2014 Thief. I never had any proper experience with the previous games of the series, only tried Thief 3 back when my PC could barely run it, so the low fps made me give up. My short time with new Thief wasn’t bad, though I didn’t finish the game as it was on my xbox1 and I never really sat down to play anything to completion on it. Online it’s all “Thief is shit, it’s a shit game” etc. Maybe I didn’t get to the shit part, I completed maybe 4 missions?, but while it wasn’t amazing, it felt like a decent stealth game and had me more interested in continuing than Styx Master of Shadows
From the 360 Era — Too Human
The control scheme is bizarre at first (right stick is melee) but it works once you’re used to it. It’s Sci-Fi Norse mythology, I recall it having a pretty solid art style. I picked it up used from either Blockbuster or EB because I wanted to see just how bad it was, ended up enjoying it far more than I expected, I’ll give it a “Yeah, it’s ok”, disc images are readily available if you want to emulate it, can find a physical copy cheap online too if that’s your thing.
Primarily Titan Fall 2. Been wanting to try it for a bit now and it really exceeds my expectations. Love the movement, shooting, and feel of everything. Only thing I really don't enjoy is the titan sections but outside of that it kind of rules.
The Titan sections in TF|2 confused me, half of them were basic arenas and the other half were basic arenas with bosses. I played a lot of Titanfall 1 and when I would play aggressively I’d go entire matches without losing my titan, it felt more like Gundam Doom. I think it’s because they actually balanced the sequel
Anyway the campaign is fantastic, so creative and always keeps it interesting. The mech sections aren’t even bad, some of their levels are beautiful and there are some good arenas, they just weren’t what I expected
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