It's an impressive battle plan. I'm always a little pessimistic when it comes to these things, but at least this effort is casting a wide net. If even one of them succeeds that could impact the entire industry. Hopefully some government body, somewhere chooses to take this seriously.
Hopefully this showcase is successful enough to become a tradition. It would be nice to have an indie-focused showcase that doesn't have to juggle their time between the games, advertisements, and sponsors.
Feels like forever since I heard Ken Levine ramble on about narrative LEGOs and game design. It's an interesting concept and hopefully the game lives up to expectations. I'm still cautious that it might all end up being pre-release hype, but he certainly seems passionate about the idea and I'm certainly curious to see what narrative LEGOs actually looks like in execution.
I have an unhealthy cycle of this with Hearts of Iron IV a WW2 grand strategy game. I'll realize the embarrassing number of hours that I've put into the game and then I'll stop playing for a while. But then one of the big mods for it will update and then I dive back in and lose a weekend and then the process repeats.
The other game I consistently come back to is Threads of Fate or Dewprism it's a PS1 action-RPG with dual protagonists where each one has their own campaign or story to play through. I guess it's nostalgia that keeps me coming back to it, but it really wasn't a favorite game growing up and I didn't beat it until years after I'd gotten it. But every few years I'll just remember it out of the blue and get the urge to play through it again.
From what I understand, fast travel isn't locked behind microtransactions, despite some claims I've seen. You can buy an item that you can place that lets you teleport back to that point, kind of like fast traveling to a map marker. These items are available in game along with fixed fast travel points between major cities. So the reviewers would have had access to fast travel they just wouldn't have been able to use real money buy them whenever they needed them.
The microtransactions are bad enough, but the fact that none of these were present in the build given to reviewers just makes it worse. I mean people would still be complaining about them, but I don't think the backlash would be as bad if Capcom had made it clear from the start that the game was going to be riddled with microtransactions.
Genuinely excited to see Alpha Protocol available for sale again after all this time. Was not expecting to see it on the front page of GOG. It is such an interesting game, even if it isn't, strictly speaking, a good game.
The thing that gets me about this is that it's always some nefarious outside group pressuring devs to make their games "woke" or whatever. It never seems to occur to these people that the people making the games might actually hold those beliefs and aren't being forced to put them in games at gunpoint. Also, did the guy complaining about Ragnarok play GoW 2018? The fact that Kratos isn't the same person he was in the old series is basically the entire point.
Aspyr really keeps stepping on rakes with this one don't they? Rereleasing a classic like this should have been a slam dunk. It's really becoming a trend with Aspyr to have issues with their Star Wars ports, but at the same time I have to wonder if if there was pressure from Embracer to rush this out the door. When you're still desperately axing and selling off studios, rereleasing a fan favorite Star Wars game probably sounds like easy money no matter how much more time the game needs to be finished.
After around sixty hours I finally rolled credits on Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Started to feel like a slog towards the end, but I wanted to see the story through to the end. Those last three chapters had to have the most Yakuza-style plot twists I have ever seen. Overall I ended up liking it a lot more then I was expecting given that its the series first JRPG. I think it handled the switch well, although it did feel a bit grindy at the end. There's still some side content I might end up doing, but for now I feel like I need a break from it.
Maybe a dumb suggestion, but since you mentioned older systems, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a PS1 classic that helped create the Metroidvania genre. There's also Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, which is a spiritual successor by one the key developers behind SOTN. Dead Cells and Hollow Knight are solid games that have been recommended already, but if you find yourself enjoying the rogue-lite elements of those you might enjoy Cult of the Lamb. Admittedly it's top down 2.5d, but it's a nice blend of rogue lite and town management as your tasked with building up a cult and turning it into a thriving community in between fighting your way through dungeons.
Depends on your tastes. If you like platformers the PS2 had some great ones. Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, and the Sly Cooper series to name a few. For something more action-oriented the old God of War games still hold up, although they are very different in tone from the modern ones. If you have any interest in JRPGs there's FFX, X2, and FFXII along with Personas 3 and 4. Although most of those have better ports/remasters/remakes on modern systems.