I've been trying to finish up Backpack Hero, now that, after some meandering, I finally figured out how to progress the story mode. In a game all about UI, it's kind of impressive how much the UI either isn't very good or just breaks on a functional level, but the game is very fun. After I finish it, I'll be heading back to Starfield and Wargroove 2.
Guilty Gear Strive also got a really great new patch, adding Elphelt and addressing some pretty glaring problems with the new mechanics they added. It feels like it's in the best spot it's ever been in.
I played DMC3 years ago and never really understood the genre. It was fun, but every other game like it felt exactly the same to me. Then Hi-Fi Rush came out this year, and it clicked, so before this year's releases started really kicking off in summer, I played through DMC1-3 and half of 4. I'll get back to it soon enough, but I really liked what I played of 4; it was the best one so far, honestly. Were your problems with Nero limited to how he plays in 5, or did that criticism also apply to 4?
Tenet. I know, most people would be quick to dismiss this as a movie and a mediocre one at that. I myself saw it on release and gave it a 7/10. But this isn’t actually a movie, it’s a puzzle game that you’re meant to play at home hammering the pause button while frantically trying to understand what is happening. This also increases your time with it by at least a factor of 2. 9/10
I love Nolan movies, and one of the reasons why is that all of his sci fi movies work this way. Even the ones where the world is more straight forward like The Dark Knight are fun to go back and catch all the ways the motifs are used throughout, like "a dog off his leash" and "everything burns" and a handful of others.
It's more and more often that I try an open world game and think to myself how much better it would have been if I could just select a mission from a menu.
Nah, I'd rather not give them my time or my money. If I'm playing Tears of the Kingdom, even pirated, it means that's time I'm not spending on games from companies that have more respect for their customers. If I pirated it, it also means I'd have thoughts on the game that I'd share with friends or forum users, and that would encourage more people to also buy the game. So no, they don't even get my illicit download.
People quite liked Prey. There was an article that came out about Redfall's development where they had something like 70% of the studio leaving because they were put to work on a live service game, but the kind of person who applies to Arkane is interested in the type of game that Arkane is known for, not what they were tasked with building. This led to them filling out the studio with inexperienced developers as they replaced more experienced talent that moved on to other companies.
They're going for different things, so it's not even apples to apples, but if any game had a right to beat <the one you think you should have won>, it's probably the one that revolves around its sound design.
They did this over and over again with a lot of their teams, didn't find a breakout hit like they wanted, and then looked for a buyer, which seemingly was nearly Sony and ended up being Microsoft. Chasing the live service thing is why we got Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Fallout 76, as well as Redfall. Hopefully they're done with that nonsense now.
Sea of Stars took that one. I'm pretty sure the winners are voted on by the same panel that submitted the nominees, but I could be wrong. I guess they could have also changed their minds after the nominees were announced and the backlash happened.
I wonder if microtransactions in big games like apex and genshin are down this year?
In Apex? Yes, and we know this from investor calls. Not sure about Genshin or Honkai, but even Fortnite is making less money. This appears to be an entire economy problem, not a video game problem. Perhaps related to inflation and consumers adapting their spending in response (a potential explanation I offer with no expertise to fall back on).
As long as you can easily turn individual mods on and off, I personally wouldn't have the expectation that one mod must not break another mod. I also don't mod much, but that's why I see potential in paid mods. What's out there the way things are now usually doesn't float my boat, and I'd like to see what we get when people can support themselves in producing mods.
My problem with it last time around, which was not the problem most people took with it, was how much of a cut Valve and Bethesda took before the mod maker saw any of that money. It's Valve's store and Bethesda's IP, sure, but if Bethesda was going to take that much of a cut, they should at least be spending some of that money on policing the bad actors in the paid mod scene to make sure it's all legit so that they earn their cut.