The best way to play Disco is to just approach it as a good book. Explore as much as you can, exhaust dialogue options and submerge yourself in the world. Don’t be afraid to fail checks, don’t be afraid to pick wacky dialogue options.
The game is pure art and it’s the most meaningful, thought provoking and emotional experience I’ve had while playing any video game. Granted the themes really resonated with me personally.
I don’t think low INT is for a first playthrough so I haven’t, but I know it’s an option. And given a lot of the people behind Fallout 1&2 went on to work for Troika I’d expect nothing less. I might check it out some day, the low INT run in the first two Fallouts are great. I rarely feel like I have time to replay games these days though, with the length of my backlog.
Been playing Arcanum, hopefully through to the end for the first time this time. Only begun it before, never got far. The game has a lot of charms, but also a lot of frustrations. Typical Troika, I guess. When it’s firing on all cylinders and the pieces of a quest puzzle happen to click into place it can be great, but oftentimes imbecilic design decisions get in the way of having fun. And it doesn’t help that combat is horrible and the animations are ugly, even for its time.
I’m towards the end of the game now so I’ll try to push through since I’d like to have finished it at least once. I do enjoy the world building, at least parts of it. It’s a little disappointing that the races are derivative sort of boilerplate fantasy Tolkienesque Dwarves and Elves and Halflings etc, but the Victorian era inspired steampunk setting is well executed and the tension and conflict between magic and technology feels fully fleshed out and very grounded in the game world. I also really appreciate the again very Victorian flavored racism towards Orcs and Half-Orcs, including an explicit reference to The Jewish Question.
In my opinion, the reward for “doing the homework” is worth it. The Remedy games have become somewhat incestuous with their interconnected universe, but AW2 is - in my opinion - good enough that playing the preceding games first is worth the payoff. The only Remedy game I didn’t play was Quantum Break, but that one is only tangentially referenced as they don’t own the rights to the IP. Max Payne is explicitly referenced (though under a different name as Rockstar owns that IP) and having played Max Payne 1 heightened the enjoyment of AW 1&2 in my opinion.
Beyond that, the story of AW2 is a direct sequel to AW1 and while it’s possible to play it standalone it will be somewhat confusing and a lesser experience I would say. The story also directly connects to Control, and having played that one first will again enrich your enjoyment of AW2. Plus Control is just a great game anyway.
Alongside Cyberpunk, AW2 is probably the best showcase for ray tracing I think. Truly a gorgeous game.
Excited to hear what you think about the DLCs! I also have been avoiding spoilers and putting them off, and I’ve built up towards doing a full playthrough plus the DLCs sometime soon myself. Really looking forward to it.
Ahh, the nostalgia of hearing about those old titles again. Takes me back to the days of being a kid reading PC Gamer monthly with ravenous wonder and excitement. That period of '94 to '06-09 or so really was the golden age of PC gaming. I’ve been thinking about starting up a sub specifically about that era actually, retro gaming subs often tend to focus more about old consoles and arcade games.
Similarly, Desperados 2 (2006) made the first game feel a century old. From the same camera distance as the first game, it both looked far better than the original and had the advantage of dynamic lighting, more fluidity and a freely rotatable camera. Up close it was a bit blocky, but this was to be expected back then.
Interesting! I’ll take a look at the graphics, but I was otherwise set to skip it as it didn’t look like it was particularly well received.
I can confirm that these looked magnificent on a high quality CRT.
I’ve been on a bit of a retro game kick lately and have been wishing I had a really good one. It’s a shame they’re so damn bulky.
I never heard of it back in the day, but I did see it suggested on GOG when I looked at Desperados. I might consider grabbing it the next time it’s really cheap if it’s really that good. Better than Desperados/Commandos you reckon?
some of the most beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds I’ve ever seen in an isometric game.
The old isometric games have really aged so gracefully. Desperados looks absolutely fantastic still imo and Baldur’s Gate 2 also has some fantastic isometric art (sprites not so much). I bet they’d look even better on a good CRT, too.
I bought the whole collection on GOG when it was something like 80% off in 2023 I think. Still haven’t started. I hope it’s as good as people say. I know many people start with 0 but I think I’ll start with Kiwami for the close-to-release-order experience. Will probably start it sometime this year.
Wonder how this will do, MOBA has got to be the toughest genre to break into with both LoL and Dota 2 completely owning the market. I know HoN has some pedigree and brand recognition but even back then it was never that huge, and it’s biggest claim to fame at the time was that its engine was much better than running as a WC3 custom map (since that’s all Dota was at the time) - it was basically seen as Dota 1.5 and when Dota 2 came out most people jumped ship. At least that’s how I remember it, it’s been a while.
…that got me wondering what it might have looked like on a CRT. I know they have a sort of natural AA effect, so I’m wondering if it might look better for me if I break one out.
Do you have a good one just lying around? I’ve been on a retro game kick lately and sort of wish I had a good CRT but they’re so goddamn big and bulky so it’s not like I kept one around from back in the day. But you’re absolutely right about old games being made with them in mind and it’s especially noticeable for stuff like pixel art games.
I finished Pathfinder: Kingmaker after putting 250 or so hours into it and now I feel kind of empty. I still don’t think it’s a particularly great game, but after spending so much time on it you develop a sort of Stockholm syndrome. There are things about the game I enjoyed, but also endless frustrations. The ending chapters especially were an absolutely insane slog of numerous terrible Wild Hunt encounters that seem completely mindlessly thrown together to up the “challenge”. It’s a shame, really because there is a good game in there somewhere if you’d only scale back the bullshit. It could also do with some editing in general, I don’t think it justifies being so goddamn long.
Looking for the next thing to fill the void has been a bit of a challenge, I’ve been at it with Kingmaker for so long it’s been tough to switch focus suddenly. I started Weird West, which I bought on the last GOG sale and the beginning of it seemed alright, not sure if it will stick though. I also played through the first couple of levels of Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive which is an absolute classic that I never played back in the day. The AI is pretty dumb, but immersion breaking stupidity aside it’s still super fun to approach it as a puzzle and work around and abuse the dumb AI.
Still, my brain might still be in the CRPG frame of mind after two months of Kingmaker so I also installed Arcanum with the Multiverse Edition modpack. Perhaps this is the time I finally play through it.
The one thing it can’t be criticised for as I understand it is polish. I’ve heard many complaints about almost everything else, but as far as technical matters it seems to have shipped very well optimised and largely bug free - a welcome change from what we’ve grown accustomed to.