BG3 is great and all but there are other games with at least equal voice acting quality. For all its qualities I never felt like “wow, I’ve never seen voice acting like this in a game!” when I played BG3. It’s really good and really consistent but nothing earth shattering.
I know I bring up Disco Elysium a lot, but that is one game where I got repeatedly shocked at the quality and diversity of the voice acting. With the exception of one single character I think it’s acted to absolute perfection.
I also didn’t really feel the same about Alan Wake 2 like, at all. I thought it had superb acting (both voice and full video segments) and probably hold the quality of its acting above BG3 personally. Alan Wake 1 less so.
They’re mostly also just all the same, so playing one after another back-to-back exacerbates the issue, at least for me. There are some exceptions, but that checklist filled Ubisoft collect-a-thon design philosophy really wears you out quick. At least it does me.
The original is rough yes, but I don’t know anyone that would play it over the Remaster these days. And the remaster is fine as far as playability goes. However, it’s still a candidate for this thread simply because the DS1 bosses will feel very anticlimactic for anyone who has played DS3/ER/Bloodborne/Sekiro.
It’d be kind of like if Assassin’s Creed Unity played the same song that was in that famous reveal trailer (…)
God, that AC Unity trailer with “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” might still be my all time favourite trailer. It’s so good.
I’m glad AC Shadows is going in a good direction though. I thought the series was completely lost after the shift to RPGs. Still not sure I’ll play it but I might consider it now on sale. Yours is not the first surprisingly positive review I’ve seen.
The classic Fallouts do have some quirks, but I hope you get through them and can get into it. They are absolutely amazing games, well worth your time.
I haven’t gotten around to them myself yet (they’re on the docket this year) but I’ve heard this said about Yakuza 1&2 since the release of Kiwami 1&2.
I’ve personally gotten a lot out of all the AI enhanced graphics technologies, and pretty much consider these applications the absolute perfect use case for the AI we have today. Yes, they shouldn’t be a substitute for optimisation, but overcorrecting the other way and attempting to claim that DLSS is garbage that ruins everything and looks like shit is also bad (and untrue).
Even frame generation has its uses, as long as you don’t play something fast paced where there is a lot of camera movement and/or you’ll feel the added input lag too much.
A special shout-out to the redheaded stepchild of the family too: DLDSR is a fantastic technology and once you’ve tried it you’ll never want to go back.
The F1 season kicked off, so I played around a bit with F1 Manager 2024 since it was free on Epic a few weeks ago. It’s much like the previous iterations of the series - great presentation but vapid and shallow underneath. It’s a real shame, because there are things about it that are compelling. Having all those real team radios and proper circuits and gorgeous cockpit views during races and all the official branding does make a difference. In-race management is also pretty damn fun.
The problem is that it was designed by a team that don’t understand management games. Everything about it starts falling apart the more seasons you play, which is the complete antithesis of what management players are after. The great things like team radios disappear as you replace your drivers and staff members with youngsters or generated people who don’t have voice clips. Nobody has a personality, there are no off-track events that make you invested. The greatness of the perfectly replicated race calendar fades as tracks aren’t added or removed between seasons. There are no interesting regulation changes over time that change fundamental aspects of the car or the rules. The power ranking and properties of the engines never change.
There is no soul or depth here to hook you for years upon years and make you want to build a dynasty. It basically only works if you pick a top or midfield team and try to manage a championship win during the first or second season, beyond that it loses its shine. Still, it’ll be a decent distraction this week as there is no race to watch.
I’m taking this topic to be less of “what’s the most important video game” (which we already had a long discussion post about recently re: the BAFTA award thing) and more of “what’s the best game to just sit down and play right now”. In which case, probably Portal 2? I can’t think of a much better candidate in terms of being a perfect execution of what it sets out to do with an appeal that can be compelling for absolutely everyone regardless of taste.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 is basically just more BG3 (though with less production quality) so that should be right up your RPG-loving friend’s alley. Turn based combat and click-to-move lets you play the whole thing with just your mouse I’m pretty sure.
I’m in the minority that says the newest games don’t need to get 60fps 4k ultra on the newest GPUs
This is a great take tbh and I agree. Future proofing is a thing and we’ve seen old benchmark games hold up remarkably well thanks to it - hell, look at Crysis! I also think a lot of people underestimate just how demanding 4k is. We’re still not at the point where 4k is the new 1080p imo.
I’m kind of in the same boat. SS2 will always be there if I wanted to play it, and a remaster isn’t really making me more or less likely to. But a full remake would be very interesting especially since the studio was so successful with the SS1 remake and it turned out so well.
Graphically it looks awesome too. At the native settings it would have had around 2012 it didn’t look to great, but after raising it to the max it looks really good. It can be crazy how future proofed older games are with graphic options.
One of the best things I’ve found for cleaning up older games is DLDSR. Hell, I try to use it on any game I can get away with, but on older games especially it’s great because you have so much excess FPS to play with that it’s basically free. The anti-aliasing effect of it is especially nice on older games and typically much better than the native AA solution.