Deus Ex is great but 55 hours of having nothing to do but Deus Ex sounds overwhelming. Grab UFO 50 as well so you have some low-commitment alternatives to fall back on.
There’s like an emotional component to it, though. Having lots of options doesn’t necessarily feel like lots of options. Deus Ex and hundreds of gigs of not Deus Ex feels like a yes or no decision, trying one of the multitude of other options being psychically equivalent just turning the machine off. At least in my experience.
Hence the suggestion of a compilation. Multiple other games but connected to each other to form a greater whole. Five minutes of Balatro and five minutes of One Way Heroics feels like ten minutes of not playing Deus Ex, whereas five minutes of Magic Garden and five minutes of Mortol feels like ten minutes of UFO 50.
On my seventh attempt, I walked into a store and was told yes when asking if there were any Switch 2s in stock. The young cashier adorably turned to his older coworker and unironically said “Wow, that’s four in one day! You weren’t kidding about these things.”
So anyways the past few days have been a blur of Mario Kart World. The new mechanics are a challenge to learn but they’re a challenge I’m delighted to have and make me feel incredible when I’m using them well, the soundtrack full of remixed classics on par with the best of Final Fantasy VII Remake’s that are just there to fill the empty space between the proper racetracks, and I was not prepared for HDR in the hands of Nintendo’s artists. This game is by far the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen on a screen and that was already true before I looked up how to use that shockingly unhelpful calibration tool the Switch 2 has and now it’s twice as beautiful on top of that.
The sole complaint I have about this game is that I’m not enjoying Waluigi’s new voice actor. I can’t hear the pain underlying the mania that Martinet understood was core to the otherwise ill defined character. His animations and his costumes are so fucking good, though, it’s hard to even care that his voice is downgraded.
If I were given carte blanche to redesign 3D Sonic gameplay, making it control like a faster-moving Tony Hawk game seems like the way to go. Sort of the middle ground between conventional platforming and vehicle control.
I have lost so many Baldur’s Gate 3 Honour Mode runs because I’ve accidentally blown up the Zentarim hideout.
Did you know that having a torch equipped as your melee weapon means you’re considered to be carrying an open flame even when you’ve switched to have your ranged weapon out? I just found that out yesterday. Always learning new and exciting ways to explode.
I finally picked up Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, this being a game that’s been on my radar since well before it came out because I was a big fan of Jet Set Radio Future back in the day. It’s kind of too much like it and not enough like it at the same time? I tried the original Jet Set Radio when that came out on Steam and bounced off it but based on that limited experience I think this is kind of splitting the difference and that’s where most of the frustrations come from. Movement is more like JSRF but level design is more like JSR. And the soundtrack seems to lack that variety of some songs being made for the game and others being licensed that kept the monotony at bay. No “Aisle 10” to slow things down for a bit.
I am enjoying it, though, for as little as it sounds like I am. Movement feels good enough that it’s making me search for combo lines for the sake of combo lines and at the end of the day that’s what’s really important about this kinda game.
Also finally finished Zelda echoes of wisdom.
Never would have guessed going in that that would have the most graphically violent last boss sequence the series has ever seen. I beat it feeling like I was the real monster.
Holiday weekend… Forgot to post. Whatcha all been playing! I’ve mainly just been continuing with Talos principle 2. It’s good! The story is definitely a lot bigger in scope this time around but I am enjoying it so far
I got that Blue Prince bug where your data secretly stops saving twice now. I read it’s been fixed but playing the game has a tension behind it now that’s discouraging me from investing too much in it, psychologically speaking, and also I’m hesitant to play anything else on the PlayStation because closing the Blue Prince application on it risks being hit by the bug again if it does still exist.
Which all seems like the universe telling me it’s time to try Baldur’s Gate 3 Honour Mode again with these new subclasses. I’ve made a dragonborn barbarian, planning for him to be a giant that specializes in punching, playing him arrogant and naive. Lae’zel and Wyll feel like good companions for that temperament but I don’t know who my third should be. Maybe stick with a hireling until I get one of the druids? He’s too insecure to tolerate Shadowheart or Gale. Astarion or Karlach would mean having to reclass somebody so there’d be a support role on the team and reclassing the origins never sits well with me.
UPDATE: Things did not go well at the goblin camp.
I hope you’re not playing Anniversary Edition for your first time with the game. Getting bombarded with all that Creation Club stuff would not be my ideal first impression.
I’m deep into Blue Prince right now. Not loving all the randomness for this kind of puzzle game but the puzzles and lore are good enough to keep me going. Always a weird feeling to think “I love this, I just wish its core premise wasn’t part of it.”
It’s been a long time since I faced such moments perhaps due to games taking longer to make and becoming a more mature medium. Also games as a whole are more consistent at just being good instead of being built around moments. But here’s my list...
Final Fantasy VII Remake, when the proper Jenova theme played. Props to the hours of auditory misdirect leading up to it.
“We wouldn’t just play it, of course. That song is too silly for a dramatic scene. But here is a subdued motif to remind you of it.”
“Well we have to play it now because there’s a new Jenova fight but you’re getting the respectable cinematic version.”
“Now the fight’s really getting going, you’re getting the upper hand so time to boost the epicness and heroicness during the climax. Isn’t this song so cool now that we fixed it?”
Then the synthesizer finally kicks in and it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard.
I like open world games when the time I spend simply being in them without any explicit objective is enjoyable. If I’m thinking “I’m bored, where’s the next task?” then there’s a problem. If I’m thinking “I wonder if I can make a boat that operates by paddling instead of using a fan…” then we’re good.
(Tears of the Kingdom’s physics don’t work that way, I’m sorry to report. Thing flailed around like it was drowning.)
I saw someone, somewhere, saying something like this recently: it’s always easier to play the role of doomsayer than the optimist, because far fewer people seem to care if you’re wrong when you’re predicting something will fail....
I simply cannot bring myself to care that giant corporations won’t make as much money as they used to by doing a thing I already don’t really like. If this is what the industry’s death entails, why should anyone grieve?
For many gamers, this week’s release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered has provided a good excuse to revisit a well-remembered RPG classic from years past. For others, it’s provided a good excuse to catch up on a well-regarded game that they haven’t gotten around to playing in the nearly two decades since its...
If you limit yourself to only going into dungeons that quests send you to, you’ll have a better time. Legend tells it all the dungeons in this whole game were made by one person, so blundering into random ones tends to be really underwhelming compared to Skyrim. While that is charming for me in its own right to wander into a random dungeon and not know whether there will be anything interesting about it at all, all my best memories of this game are of the quests and the dialogue.
I can’t put Oblivion down but I keep scrapping my character. Started as a stealth build but stealth isn’t as fun as combat. Made an unarmed fighter and was very impressed with how deadly I was but ultimately decided new weapons and spells are a fun treat that I wouldn’t get to have and I regretted how wacky I made his face.
Presently I’m doing a melee/magic type and I accidentally made him look uncannily like Wynn Duffy from Justified. He’s less capable than previous builds but kind of sucking at what he does just feels right with that face.
I immediately bought the Oblivion remaster because I guess I’m that basic. They have done away with my beloved IV LIVI BLIVIO title screen and replaced it with some Doom art, and when exiting the sewer at the beginning I immediately see an Oblivion gate across the river before the point in the story you’re supposed to find them (apparently the new progression lock is that they’re present but non-interactive before then). It seems like it was made with fear that new players would react poorly to the sort of cutesy fantasy that comprises the majority of the game and it needs them to see hellfire quickly so they know it’s “actually” a cool game for cool guys. All the stranger then that they’ve added these bouncy new dialogue animations that would feel at home in The Sims.
But for all my nitpicking, it is still the Oblivion I love and the new visuals are a treat. I really didn’t expect such bold artistic swings as these wacky new heads on the Argonians and goblins or my character’s acrobatic knife moves.
I’m a Khajiit Bard named Stabby Cat who accidentally procured an armored horse because I never bought that DLC before and did not know the consequences of talking to that random Orc. I’ve leveled up twice just from sweet talking shopkeepers to get better prices from them. I crossed paths with a pair of NPCs who immediately complained to each other that they had nothing to talk about, then one thought of a topic but got shut down hard by the other’s direct refusal to participate.
Feels good to be back.
EDIT: I’ve since learned that my non-interactive Oblivion gate was a bug and not actual game design.
On Wii U, upgraded Virtual Console games were like a buck or two if I’m remembering right. Probably in the five to ten range for full-price games if history’s anything to go on.
Donkey Kong Country’s Donkey Kong wasn’t actually the Donkey Kong from Donkey Kong. I kinda hope this redesign is gonna be justified by saying he’s a third one.
I was a huge fan of Breath of the Wild when it came out and played the hell out of it. At a certain point, it felt like I hit the logical end point and there wasn’t much else to do. When I started playing Tears of the Kingdom, I got exactly what I wanted which was more Breath of the Wild. I’m still playing ToTK and really...
You’ve unlocked a childhood memory. I was like twelve browsing used video games, guy at the store asked me what I liked and I said RPGs. He handed me a copy of Suikoden and said “I know it looks like absolute garbage but I promise it’s actually really good.”
At the time, my taste hadn’t developed enough to understand what was wrong with the American box art but I didn’t say anything.
For me, anything 25 FPS or higher is 100% fine and I’ll be enjoying my time. I never play competitive online shooter games ever, though. All single player ones like GOW and the likes. I game on a 60 Hz 4k monitor. GPU is AMD RX 6600 alongside Ryzen 7 5700G and 32GB RAM. My games are set to meduim most of the time at 4k....
30 is acceptable for most games but stuff where the gameplay is mainly the movement itself (platformer, racing, first person shooter) needs to hit 60. I could go lower than 30 for the visuals on a lot of games but that’s the threshold where the interface starts feeling unresponsive and that really gets to me.
Sometimes I game on keyboard + mouse, sometimes on controller, depending on the game. I love my keyboard, but being able to slouch with controller in hand is welcome as well. Unfortunately I’ve played so many games over the years with a controller that I struggle immensely to tap the right buttons when shit gets real. It’s...
Resident Evil and Street Fighter series developer Capcom is experimenting with introducing new technology, including generative AI, to tackle the ballooning costs and man-hours required for game development. In a recent interview with Google Cloud Japan, Kazuki Abe, a technical director at Capcom, gave some specific examples of...
I got an idea for a fictional TV. It’s a black rectangle with a moving picture in the middle. There’s a logo on it that almost says the name of a real TV brand but in a slightly different typeface than they use and one or two of the letters is changed.
This is a revolutionary idea that nobody has ever had before, which if implemented will actually negate the need to use AI to create fictional TVs for us.
This post was finally the push that made me buy it, having been interested since I first heard about it. Only checked out Barbuta and Bug Hunt so far.
I’m loving Barbuta. It’s scratching that itch that only Tomb Raider 1 and Dark Souls 1 have scratched before. There’s something so weirdly cozy about this air of open hostility where the individual challenges aren’t actually hard to execute. I haven’t made it very far in yet, only found/bought three items, but I’m already in the headspace where I wanna push myself to keep replaying it until I can beat it without using any eggs and I’m not one to normally care about that sort of thing.
Bug Hunt is okay but, in terms of the framing device that this is a compilation of old games, I’m not buying it. Its mechanics and writing and tutorial pop-up windows feel distinctly like a modern indie game. Barbuta only slipped once that I’ve seen so far, with that I Wanna Be the Guy trap on the first screen.
“If weak to fire then cast Fira”. You don’t even need to have your characters learn the weakness first by scanning them, they just intuit every weakness.
spoilerThe frame story of Returns, where Guybrush is telling an account of his life story to his son, is that a filter we’re now supposed to retroactively apply to the whole series? The end of this game, another “it’s all just Disneyland” ending like Revenge had, felt very pointedly like a cover-up. The whole story is low-key building up this theme of Guybrush actually being a terrible person and his quest being both personally unhealthy and harmful to those around him, with little things like the game silently marking off the checklist of horrible things he did on the how-to-be-evil pamphlet he got from LeChuck and big things like Elaine confronting him with his actions while they travel together, so when the ending turns into such an anti-climactic non-sequitur it reads like he can’t bring himself to tell his son the truth of what happened and you hope it’s because he actually gave up the quest and knows that isn’t the story kids want to be told but fear it’s because shit got real in a different sense and he doesn’t want Boybrush to view him in that light. With that in mind, now I can’t stop wondering if that’s what the Carnival of the Damned always was: an act of self-censorship by the hypothetical storyteller.
I’m currently playing Xenoblade Chronicles and I also played Final Fantasy remake and Golden Sun recently and all of them have wildly different combats. Which got me thinking what JRPG out there had the best combat? This doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily your favorite JRPG as well....
The enemies are placed on a grid and your characters have abilities that can move them around or place traps on certain squares, plus as part of the game’s time travel theme you can reorganize the upcoming turn order. Use those together and you can arrange the absolute sickest combos, knocking everyone into a big cluster and then wailing the shit out of that cluster.
Just be sure to play the original DS version and not the enhanced 3DS version with new art, voice acting, and story additions that ruin the tone.
I got no beef with the three prongs like you see so many fuss about but those analog sticks were extremely fragile and would inevitably go completely limp over time and wind up 99% deadzone.
At the moment I use my 8bitdo pro2. It was kinda expensive but its a huge upgrade from my no name switch controllers and awful gamesube one from powera....
I can’t think of another game that I like so much and enjoy playing so little. I will spend countless hours creating families and houses and then five minutes playing the actual game before I’m like “oh, right, I hate this” and then I start making another family.
Probably part of the run up to the announcement and release of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. In any case, I’m happy to spread the word because a free version of Dragon Age: Origins in the same year DAI was released is how I found the franchise.
For anybody playing this for the first time, an important piece of advice:
Don’t be a completionist. Leave areas before you’ve done everything in them and don’t do any side quests you’re not interested in.
It’s my least favorite Dragon Age but it got a lot more hate than it deserved because other open world games trained people to play it the boringest way possible.
Not in the sense where they failed to make it interesting, more in the Breath of the Wild type philosophy where any side-content you do is indirectly progress toward the main goal so there’s a mix of things of varying levels of interestingness in all directions. You have an organization that raises in “power” or whatever they call those points whenever you do a side quest and you need to bank up certain amounts of those power points to do the next story mission or unlock the next region. That progression is paced in such a way that you simply don’t need to do most things.
Many quests are genuinely interesting but other ones are just filler. And some filler between good quests is inoffensive, maybe even a refreshing little diversion. One generic filler side quest is essentially “stand next to this portal and kill all the ghosts that come out of it”. Doing that once in a while is okay, doing it as many times as there are portals to find is torture.
I still haven’t played the sequels, would you say they’re still worthwhile or is it for the best to leave the story at the end of Origins?
The short version of that answer is that the sequels do not have what you love about the original but you might also like them for the different things that they are.
Awakening feels less like a sequel (technically an optionally standalone expansion but I’m counting it) and more like a fan mod. It’s nerdier, sillier, edgier, and has that high-effort mod habit of adding concepts that should logically be new mechanics but are executed by old ones because you’re doing it on minimal skill and zero budget. I think that’s a pretty cute vibe but it’s fundamentally just Origins again but worse.
2 has high highs and low lows and, while I personally love it, it’s negative general reception is very fairly earned. The thing that it was trying to do in the first place, story-wise, is something that would already have been divisive even if the rest of the game were flawlessly executed and it was emphatically not flawlessly executed. The simplest way I can describe it is that it is not a story about an adventure, it’s a story about a place. You do not leave that place, you just stay there over the course of several years and experience the historically significant events that are happening there. So the narrative focus for you as a protagonist is on how you feel about things rather than what you’re accomplishing.
Inquisition, conversely, is the least interesting one from a conceptual standpoint but, like, it’s competent from a technical standpoint and the harsh criticisms you tend to hear usually stem from misunderstandings about its design rather than the lack of creative ambition. There’s another new evil horde and you’re another special dude who’s the only one who can stop them and now you’ve got a personal army instead of being an underdog. There’s more political conflict than the first game but the politics are less complex. Ultimately, though, I think the most important factor of any open world game is simply the degree to which you want to spend time in that world regardless of what it is you’re actually doing and it’s an interesting enough world to spend some time in. Certainly, it’s worth trying for free.
I have about 55 hours of flights coming up. I’m thinking about the deus ex collection. Any thoughts? angielski
I’m visiting my home country on the other side of the world in a few months and I want to load up my steamdeck....
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of June 22nd
What have you been playing?...
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of June 15th
Late thread sorry!...
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of June 8th
What have you all been playing?...
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of May 25th
Holiday weekend… Forgot to post. Whatcha all been playing! I’ve mainly just been continuing with Talos principle 2. It’s good! The story is definitely a lot bigger in scope this time around but I am enjoying it so far
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of May 11th
Whatcha all playing?...
What are the best gaming moments of the last decade? angielski
It’s been a long time since I faced such moments perhaps due to games taking longer to make and becoming a more mature medium. Also games as a whole are more consistent at just being good instead of being built around moments. But here’s my list...
Open World Games: yay or nay? angielski
As I get older, I notice that the open world formula is tiring! I much prefer a linear game told well than the same game with add-ons....
GTA 6's delay doesn't mean the games industry's in trouble - it's already dead (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
I saw someone, somewhere, saying something like this recently: it’s always easier to play the role of doomsayer than the optimist, because far fewer people seem to care if you’re wrong when you’re predicting something will fail....
Is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion still fun for a first-time player in 2025? (arstechnica.com) angielski
For many gamers, this week’s release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered has provided a good excuse to revisit a well-remembered RPG classic from years past. For others, it’s provided a good excuse to catch up on a well-regarded game that they haven’t gotten around to playing in the nearly two decades since its...
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of April 27th
What are y’all playing?...
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of April 20th
Happy Sunday! Whatcha y’all been playing?...
Nintendo Switch 2 Direct Megathread (www.youtube.com)
Figured it’d be nice to have a spot to talk about this. Link is to the upcoming direct on their channel....
Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a Masterpiece, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an Indulgence
I was a huge fan of Breath of the Wild when it came out and played the hell out of it. At a certain point, it felt like I hit the logical end point and there wasn’t much else to do. When I started playing Tears of the Kingdom, I got exactly what I wanted which was more Breath of the Wild. I’m still playing ToTK and really...
Suikoden US vs JPN Box Art angielski
What's your "this is totally fine and I'm going to have a great time" FPS (refresh rate). ?
For me, anything 25 FPS or higher is 100% fine and I’ll be enjoying my time. I never play competitive online shooter games ever, though. All single player ones like GOW and the likes. I game on a 60 Hz 4k monitor. GPU is AMD RX 6600 alongside Ryzen 7 5700G and 32GB RAM. My games are set to meduim most of the time at 4k....
What are some games you like that most people hate and/or were panned by critics? angielski
What are some games you like that most people hate, view negatively and/or were panned by critics?
Gaming on controller & "typos"
Sometimes I game on keyboard + mouse, sometimes on controller, depending on the game. I love my keyboard, but being able to slouch with controller in hand is welcome as well. Unfortunately I’ve played so many games over the years with a controller that I struggle immensely to tap the right buttons when shit gets real. It’s...
Capcom is experimenting with generative AI to help generate the “hundreds of thousands of ideas needed for game development" (automaton-media.com) angielski
Resident Evil and Street Fighter series developer Capcom is experimenting with introducing new technology, including generative AI, to tackle the ballooning costs and man-hours required for game development. In a recent interview with Google Cloud Japan, Kazuki Abe, a technical director at Capcom, gave some specific examples of...
Let's discuss: UFO 50 (beehaw.org) angielski
The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!...
Let's discuss: Final Fantasy (beehaw.org) angielski
The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!...
A Prominent Accessibility Advocate Worked With Studios and Inspired Change. But She Never Actually Existed. (www.ign.com) angielski
Let's discuss: Monkey Island (beehaw.org) angielski
The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!...
Amazon reportedly working on animated anthology TV series featuring Spelunky and other video game worlds (www.eurogamer.net)
What JRPG combat is your favorite? angielski
I’m currently playing Xenoblade Chronicles and I also played Final Fantasy remake and Golden Sun recently and all of them have wildly different combats. Which got me thinking what JRPG out there had the best combat? This doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily your favorite JRPG as well....
New Nintendo Switch accessory might confirm some leaked details about Switch 2 (www.polygon.com) angielski
I asked what your fave controllers are, now. What is the worst controller you have used?
So. I have 2 I hate....
What are your favourite controllers?
At the moment I use my 8bitdo pro2. It was kinda expensive but its a huge upgrade from my no name switch controllers and awful gamesube one from powera....
Let's discuss: Stardew Valley (beehaw.org) angielski
The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!...
Let's discuss: The Sims (beehaw.org) angielski
The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!...
Dragon Age Inquisition free on Epic right now (beehaw.org) angielski
Probably part of the run up to the announcement and release of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. In any case, I’m happy to spread the word because a free version of Dragon Age: Origins in the same year DAI was released is how I found the franchise.