Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was the most creative game I’ve played in years and years. Amazing story, amazing characters, amazing art and world design, all topped off with a beautiful soundtrack. The gameplay was of course good-- not perfect–but, very satisfying when it hit its stride.
All that to say: Yes, I want more weird and creative games of that caliber. I haven’t played Death Stranding 2 yet, but I definitely plan to at some point.
All fair points. I can definitely see the appeal of wanting the same functionality that the Deck controller brings, as I myself really enjoy the extra flexibility the trackpads and back buttons provide. But the ergonomics in this example just looks awful and feels really reminiscent of the original Xbox controller.
Yeah, this looks awful to use. It’s okay on the Deck because that’s a mobile device and has a lot of functions it needs to satisfy on the go. For a dedicated controller? Why the hell would you prefer this over the better ergonomically designed SC 1 or literally any other console controller?
Oh for sure, and I did enjoy some of the side content and thought some of the optional quest stories were good. When I say smaller scale, I think a game like Expedition 33 nailed the balance of having plenty of side/extra content that’s fun to do while also ensuring that completionists don’t go mad from trying to hunt down everything.
Regardless, I agree with you on everything you said; it all boils down to preferences :)
I thought the core of GW: Tokyo was pretty good, but it suffered from far too much open world bloat. I’d love to see them revisit that world, but it’d be great if they made it focused on a smaller scale. Just my two cents, anyway.
I got into it for the first time back around this last December/January. I was amazed how active the community still is. I didn’t even play on the most populated English server, and chat was always active. Sidenote: There’s only a quasi-global chat thru Yelling while in cities, you have to join Linkshells for more consistent chatting (that game’s version of guilds, and yes you can have more than one linkshell at a time).
As for the gameplay itself: It’s a very clunky game, and it’s very slow. But, that’s part of the charm when compared to today’s MMOs where everything is designed for instant gratification. Fortunately, there are tons of add-ons the community has made to enable some Quality of Life features, such as updated HD textures, a minimap, auto-inventory manager and sorter, etc. I got to around level 70 after about 6sh weeks/120 hours of game time, until my annual MMO interest dried up. I might dive back into it again next year whenever the MMO itch hits again.
Supposedly Square was working on a remaster of the game back around 2018, but it got scrapped a couple of years into development. Which is a shame, because the game with some modern UI sensibilities and graphics would be really nice (as long as they didn’t change hardly anything of the core gameplay).
Overall, it was nice/kind of sad to see it still had a lot more depth than FF14, which I consider to be very watered down nowadays even compared to its 2.0 re-release. But again, for anyone considering trying it out: It is a slow game, and it has alllll the jank of a 2003-era MMO. Just getting it installed and your account setup is janky, so make sure you watch a video before even attempting it.
Their Guides feature didn’t come out until 2012sh, same with workshop. The only thing Steam had in 2010 that Epic doesn’t have right now is Community, which launched around 2007sh.
Like I said, Steam was not that good for a long time.
I don’t disagree that Epic could definitely be doing better with their storefront. They have made improvements, albeit at a glacial pace. They’ve added achievements and reviews, but it’s still a pale comparison to what Steam offers. That being said, no one seems to dig at GoG’s shitty storefront and app nearly to the same degree. Luckily, GOG allows third-party access, so you can at least replace their app with other alternatives.
Regardless, I’m not defending Epic, I was simply trying to avoid doing the mindless “fuck Epic” and offer some counterargument. Epic is a shitty company, but some competition is better than zero competition. Yes, GOG exists, but they hardly have any marketshare at all and if CDPR ever stops supporting it as much as they have been, their future likely isn’t looking so great. It’s like AMD vs Nvidia. Both companies aren’t great, but I’d rather both exist than only Nvidia and/or AMD; and of course, even more competition would be even better.
People are going to list all the features Steam has over Epic, ignoring that Steam has had ~22 years to get to where it is. The original Steam experience was garbage, and lots of us older gamers knew what would happen and hated that Steam would be the primary catalyst to killing off physical media for PC games back in the mid-2000s, especially as broadband internet access was becoming far more accessible.
Don’t get me wrong, Valve has done alright so far in terms of game ownership, but once Gabe dies/retires, it’s only a matter of time before some greedy fucks force Valve to go public and the pure enshittification process begins.
Have someone that’s even just moderately good at Eternal and then watch their keyboard strokes. It’s a combo-centric game, where you’re constantly juggling weapons and jumping to and fro, and eventually it slides into a “flow.” It’s not literally a rhythm game, but it actually kind of is once you hit that flow. I don’t know how to explain it beyond that; but, it’s not a hot take in the least, as even huge fans of it have agreed with the sentiment.
I’m not a huge Linux stan, but it’s pretty damn close to it. I rarely run into compatibility issues, and when I do, there’s a very high chance a workaround exists. Hell, there’s even times when a game actually runs smoother on Linux.
In regards to the topic at hand, Denuvo’s activation limit fucks over Windows users, too. It just happens far more often due to the compatibility layer (e.g. proton, wine, etc) making it look like it’s a new computer trying to access the Denuvo servers for a game each time you change it when testing (e.g. proton v8, v9, experimental, etc). That being said, you don’t usually need to change the version that often. I usually only need to try 1-3 versions before finding one that works the best, and I think the Denuvo daily limit is like 4-5, but I could be wrong.
Empress is barely active anymore, if at all. Look at the last few dozen DRM-enabled games released in the last few years and I don’t think a single one was cracked. There was Dragon’s Dogma 2, but it turned out that was just a leaked pre-launch dev build and its performance was awful (because the game has shit performance that was even worse at launch than it is now).
Hard disagree. Doom Eternal was a rhythm game disguised as an FPS and I hated it. It’s crazy to me how widely acclaimed it was even over Doom 2016, which I thought was amazing. I’m glad they shifted back towards a more grounded FPS style that doesn’t force you to juggle your entire weapon arsenal nonstop the entire game.
Agreed on all points. Just spending more than a few seconds watching gameplay footage would put a lot of initial misconceptions to rest. But yeah, while the game is great (in my opinion), it definitely still has a ways to go to fully come into its own and I really hope they secure more funding to see their vision to completion.