Metacritic is not the good gauge for the original, given the circumstances of its release. The game was made on an alpha version of Source without any devkit as Valve were developing Source/HL2. Its development was also troubled, and ultimately pushed out the door before it was ready. It’s a miracle the game even runs at all. Not only is the final third of the game notoriously lacking compared to the early parts, but the game is literally unplayable without the fan made unofficial patch. You run into a bug that hard locks your progression like 80% of the time and cannot finish the playthrough.
Despite all that it has become a true cult classic for its writing, dialogue and characters, its humour, impeccable atmosphere and fantastic sound track. It’s been cited as one of the design inspirations for Cyberpunk 2077, among others.
These are the things the sequel will struggle living up to. The entire thing that got people excited about it was bringing back the original writer/lead designer and composer.
Tell that to the IOC who refused to feature any shooters at the Esports Olympics because they’re “too violent” - they even forced Fortnite to make a target shooting mode for its entry!
The dev has a storied past^[1] of sexism and misogyny, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise. The COVID stuff is amusing but unsurprising considering it’s a Chinese studio.
Not sure, but to be on the safe side just don’t title it “Black Myth Wukong is the most impactful global phenomenon to come out of China since the pandemic”.
The lack of a modern port makes availability an issue, so it’s definitely more in cult classic territory, but it is definitely a critics’ darling and is often thrown around among the group of best games of all time. It’s not uncommon for it to rank nr. 1 on “Best Final Fantasy Games” lists either.
Great video. I hope more stealth games learn from Freelancer and create gameplay where making small mistakes don’t induce complete fail states. I like stealth games for the moment-to-moment gameplay and for the puzzle of figuring out how to navigate a level unseen for that 100% rating, but I also hate stealth games for the constant reloading.
Ever since playing Disco Elysium I’ve started thinking more and more about the fail-forward design philosophy and the general desirability of making failure interesting instead of inciting save scumming. It’s a problem in a lot of games, but none more than stealth games, I think.
It’s been Deadlock the last couple of days since I got the invite. Not sure if I’ll stick with it. The game has potential but I think I might be too bad at it to ever have fun playing it. Farming is insanely important and between lacking precision aim for last hits and not understanding neutral camp flash farming strats I guess I’m just always behind on economy.
I do alright in fights themselves and feel like I can theoretically perform with a couple of heroes at least, but that doesn’t really matter once you get out statted.
Maybe I’m just getting too old for fast paced shooters, it’s been a while since I played one.
Others have suggested Deadlock and that really sounds like the perfect game for you two, but be aware of one thing: it does require shooting. In the laning phase last hitting and securing the orbs from creep kills by shooting them is absolutely crucial, as the game will snowball out of control if one team outfarms the other.