The OG Xbox got cut down to at least $150 from $300. My memory tells me that every console of that era was eventually cut to $100, but I found $150 with a very quick search. The PS3 slim was cut down to at least $300 from an entry price of $500. I don’t know how you call that small.
I’m not really a streaming kind of guy. Early on in the game, you’re mostly looking out for floor switches and spikes. You can hold the walk modifier to make sure you always climb down a ledge, which helps to make sure you don’t accidentally land in a spike pit, and you can throw just about anything on floor switches to trigger them before you get there so that they’re no longer a threat. You could check out a YouTube let’s play and see how they deal with them, or you could just accept that the game is pretty cheap, so worst case, you’re not out much money if you don’t like it.
I would say it’s a game that requires you to play tactically rather than rushing through it. Especially early game, the traps are very reminiscent of Spelunky, and it’s clear where a lot of their inspiration came from, but Vagante gives you even more mechanics to deal with traps, like magic rings that let you go through walls and floors, for instance, but you won’t necessarily find them every run. Noita has caught my attention here and there, but I just never made time to try it.
Not just my favorite indie game, Skullgirls is my favorite game. That game is 13 years old, and there are still killer strategies that no one has even found yet, due to how flexible defense and team synergies are.
Vagante is probably my favorite roguelike, trailed closely by Streets of Rogue. As a bonus, both are playable in online and local co-op.
Sadly, the team behind Cannon Brawl never got to make another game together after making one of the best RTS games I’ve ever played, but to be fair, it wasn’t exactly super similar to the likes of C&C and StarCraft. Tooth and Tail is another great indie RTS game that I felt could be a future for the genre, but it didn’t really take off either.
There are also a handful of indie games that I’ve played that very few have. The Masterplan is just shy of being the perfect heist game, including a bunch of mechanics built around holding people at gunpoint. Magnetic By Nature is a clever magnetic platformer that deserved more attention. And most recently, I finally gave up hope that Cloak and Dasher, a fast paced platformer like Super Meat Boy or N++, will ever get another update and leave early access, but what’s there, while kind of thin, is pretty great.
EDIT: I mistakenly listed Mind Over Magnet, Game Maker’s Toolkit’s game, instead of Magnetic By Nature. They’re very different games. Magnetic By Nature is the one that I liked that so few people played that it may as well have been a secret.
You’d lose a lot of the effect in mouse and keyboard anyway. Each combat encounter has to be tuned very differently from non-VR. But the point is that they still have a very good understanding of how to make this kind of game.
Half-Life: Alyx showed that Valve still knows how to make a great campaign shooter, and it’s not like we’re spoiled for choice in that genre right now. At this point, a solid Half-Life sequel that doesn’t push the envelope would still be amazing.
It’s looking like the Xbox will stick around as a cheap entry point into Game Pass and the games that Microsoft publishes themselves. Yes, I know, it’s not as cheap as it used to be, but still fairly capable for a game machine at that price. The Steam mini PC is likely on its way. A couple of months back, there were leaks of the new Steam controller that leaked on their way to be mass produced after finalizing the design, so they’d probably accompany the living room machine. In the meantime, I have a mini PC running Bazzite that’s been awesome, but with tariffs in the US, you won’t be able to get the same performance per dollar that I got.
We all? I mean, I have, but we represent single digit percentages of the market, which is why they keep shoving more bullshit into Windows that no one wants, because hardly anyone leaves Windows. The most that this affects Linux gamers is if you like their controllers or individual games that they publish, but that would be the same as on Windows as well.
The developer that made Sleeping Dogs shut down, and Square Enix had so many misses that they sold off their western studios. You should keep an eye on MindsEye and Mafia: The Old Country though. I’ve been dying for a good crime story that isn’t Yakuza.
Well, given the implosion in the industry due to live service games, that’s not really a solution either. The actual solution is seemingly to just make smaller games, but they’re not really interested in that, so they’ll go out of business the first time they have a game that doesn’t hit.
It might end up just being a name for game guides, which sucks, but that core nucleus will still be doing Blight Club in some capacity, and Jeff will still do his news show. I think the same thing will live on by another name, just like the old school lives on in Next Lander and Gerstmann’s solo thing.