Just finished Mafia 1 DE and 2 DE. Taking a breather before I dive in 3, which I suppose will require a lot of patience.
I really enjoyed 1 and 2. They’re anti GTA in some senses where there’s basically little to no fluff or sandbox, just pure story telling and some gameplay on the side. But the stories are definitely so well written. The DLCs of 2 showed signs of GTAfication, and the first 30 mins of 3 also reek of it, but I feel the first two definitely feel timeless only because of their writing.
About to finish Alan Wake 2 and its DLCs. It’s a great game but for me it’s bit too artsy fartsy. The flow breaks each time you switch the character, which in turn affects the pacing. Having said that the concept is cool, the fmvs integrated into the game are really high quality, they act as emmisive light sources, causing surroundings to reflect it. Pretty cool.
I think there’s a marketing slide from AMD saying they’re renaming their GPUs to better match competition. So 9070 series cards are supposed to match 5070 series cards, that’ll be 5070, 5070 Ti as of now and super later on.
EA lost its reputation but objectively they’ve been trying to undo that. Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor, while stuttery, had no micro transactions or online requirements, Dead Space remake was as simple as possible, Dragon Age ditched live service plan and was released in a very polished state, NFS Unbound just got a new update and has been well supported. The games may not be 10/10 or exactly what gamers wanted, but they’ve been trying to put their head down and do the work.
Yeah. It’s not hard because it involves skill it’s hard because your stats are low. Once you raise them up by doing things, it’s just mechanical clunk.
However I really like how this simple RPG system ties in with the story of Henry and how ordinary he is in the beginning of the story. It really makes you feel like a loser in the first half of the game and then a murdering millionaire working multiple jobs and an expert in couple of disciplines towards the end.
I remember it being a big deal, well, some deal for a brief while, that God of War Ragnarok had reused boat animations from the previous game. Similarly for Horizon Forbidden West I think.
Anyway, sports games come annually and literally feel like the same game with some adjustments here and there and they’re usually the best sellers lol, so this issue feels like a very “online thing”, or perhaps the title makes it seem like there’s a big inexcusable issue that needs a “defence”.
I absolutely loved Lies of P. I am too afraid of souls games but this was quite tightly scoped and very approachable for me (consumables were a neat solution to most of my problems). The music was spot on too!
And more importantly, it looked great and ran so well on all platforms. I can totally see them going the survival horror route, just that I feel we’ve had enough Resident Evil likes lately (even Alan Wake 2 feels like that).