The first Guildwars was great.
The second one was nice too and I played it a bunch, but there’s something about the first I can’t quite put my finger on, might just be nostalgia.
My GW2 time has been mostly spent helping people with jumping puzzles, which are kinda cut short these days by mesmers making portals for them, which I also do sometimes.
When it was released, Steam was absolute shit, which is something people tend to forget or ignore.
It has certainly come a long way, but it’s still a “Games as a Service” where you don’t really own anything.
Then again, my account is 18 y.o.
I made an account in January 2005, probably for HL2.
I initially resisted making an account and I hated Steam back then.
They’ve since fixed a lot of things and I now have 250+ games on it.
I have to admit, Valve is one of the few big game companies that haven’t gone to absolute shit.
Though I dread the day GabeN steps down or sells out…
Another thing that I didn’t agree with back in the day was WoW, paying a subscription to play was a hard no. Still haven’t played it, which kinda sucks because I was a big fan of the old Warcraft games and of RPGs in general.
Voting with my wallet certainly didn’t change much for them, although it probably was better for me.
I know I’ve finished Dying Light 2, but I don’t remember much about it.
I remember the insane amount of copy paste in the maps. Oh another roof with the half fenced in area with the same backpacks. Or the exact same ramp again.
In Dying Light 1, traveling at night was terrifying.
Being pursued by… whatever those were, looking back with your flashlight, just trying to gtfo.
In the second, it’s mostly just annoying. Shoot the same screaming zombie that’s basically dropped every 150m in a square grid.
There were different endings, which really only hinged on one or two choices that you make way early in the game and pretty much nothing else you did really mattered in the end.
Also, Alyx was there, but she spoke like Ahsoka and didn’t have a crowbar.
I love Hades, one of my favorites in recent years.
The gameplay is tight and action packed, the loop is fun, not too long, yet different enough between each run.
There are still tidbits of story and lore, but nothing that really takes time away from actual action.
I guess the absolute opposite would be a Kojima game with 45 min cutscenes, which I usually bounce off hard.
Might be a weird comparison, but the pacing in Hades kinda reminds me a bit of DOOM2016. (Another game I loved.)
Although a completely different setting and top-down roguelike instead of FPS, I get the same action packed vibe out of it.
It’s a Bethesda classic that’s also in Fallout.
Breaking news: Bethesda game made by Bethesda has classic Bethesda mechanics from pervious Bethesda games also made, you might be surprised to hear, by Bethesda employees.
Smurfing was pretty bananas in Rocket League too.
Mixed that with people convinced they should be ranked much higher and the only thing holding them back was their teammates and yes that could be pretty toxic too.
I once unknowingly let my nephew play ranked on my account and I had to rank back up from gold, which is the closest I’ve come to smurfing.
It was only a few games until the mmr leveled out, but the gold games were honestly harder than plat or diamond because of how many people don’t even have the self-awareness to know they’re messing up.
I mean, I’m messing up all the time too, I just don’t need to blame my teammates.
That said, I haven’t played much since Epic got their hands on it.