Half-Life is pretty impressive, I agree. I've actually never played it, though. It's one of those games where I had a lot of fun watching it be played by a friend, but never had much desire to play it myself. Like most of the Legacy of Kain and Final Fantasy games.
I still haven't gone back to Pathfinder. Kind of feel like, at this point, I probably won't. I own a decent catalogue of games I love and want to eventually make time to replay. I don't really have any desperate need to jump back in to a game that I wasn't enjoying like I wanted to.
That being said, I'm still doing Dragon Age right now -- working on a Rogue playthrough with a different background, race, and different dialogue options to see how different it actually feels and what kind of interesting dialogue might pop up based on those choices. Also making a different major choice early in the game to see how that changes things. Having fun with it.
I have a tendency with BioWare games to do one good playthrough, one experimental playthrough, and then a 'perfect' playthrough after that. I have a feeling I'll be doing the same here, and by the time I'm completely finished I expect the new Kingdom Come to be out and that will be my game probably until Spring, really.
I know this isn't exactly a multiplayer-heavy group, but I'm surprised no one has posted about Marvel Rivals yet.
I wouldn't say the game is great, but it's a good enough Overwatch clone with a massive player base. I've played more than eight hours of it in four days. That's a lot for an old guy like me.
As someone who grew up using controllers and only bought a gaming PC for the first time three years ago, the Marvel Rivals explosion has been bittersweet. I'm having a good time with it, but I can't hit shots so my character choices are severely limited. The game is so fun that it may finally inspire me to learn how to game on a keyboard and mouse.
In any case, I'm looking forward to playing more of this. Explaining Adam Warlock to my non-Marvel friends has been more enjoyable than I imagined.
I've been playing the original Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain that recently became available in the PlayStation store. I bought it for the PS3 years ago, so they let me add it to my library free of charge. But I'm doing so I'm anticipation of the Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver remasters, which drop today! Those games were my favorite growing up. I haven't been so excited for a game release, let alone someone I've essentially beaten multiple times, in my life!
Lots of gaming going on in my house lately. I'm still working slowly through my second playthrough of Veilguard with non-standard choices. I think after I finish there will be a good break before I go through a 'perfect' playthrough.
My wife got really into watching Baldur's Gate 3 clips and ended up downloading the trial on PS5. She found the controls tolerable enough, so I bought the game for her on XBox X (she prefers that system, but it didn't have the free trial). I think I might give it a shot myself, eventually. But that would require her and my son to stop playing for more than ten minutes so I'm hooped on that one for a while. Haha. She's having a great (and frustrating) time with it.
Since all of our game systems are hooked up to the bigger downstairs TV, I had to find a game to keep me occupied on my computer upstairs and I've settled, for now, on STALKER 2. Never played one of these sorts of games before. It's .. interesting. I'm not super far into it yet, and I'm not super sure how I feel about it. I expected a lot more survival aspects than it actually has. Gets to the point where it almost feels silly that occasionally I need to eat something since I don't really need to do anything else survival-related and food is fairly plentiful. It's more of an annoyance than challenging.
Guns kind of feel wimpy and too.. soft? I can't think of the word. They just don't feel punchy like in some games.
Dogs fucking suck. Like in practically every video game, the pathing used for them is actually ridiculous and it's way too easy to get mauled. I've legitimately died to fucking dogs more than 3 times more than to any other cause in this game so far. At one point I got mauled to death like six or seven times in a row trying to get into this fortified area, but once I got inside it I was able to handle all the enemies inside with no problem. That doesn't seem like a skill issue so much as a 'dogs in this game are totally fucked' issue.
Also the knife sucks. Not sure if I've ever seen a video game before where your knife was this ineffective at killing enemies? Why even have it.
Still.. I'm enjoying the game enough right now to keep turning it on, so that must be something. Definitely one of those games where I'm not sure if I'll bother to see it all the way to the end or not. I don't even know if I can recommend it as a good game because I'm not familiar enough with games like this to know if it's on the good end or bad end of the spectrum.
Space Marine 2 is a reeeeeally good game. It feels a bit like COD in the sense that the campaign seems like it's there to justify the existence of the multiplayer. Not in the sense that the campaign is bad. It's actually great. But it's fairly short, and by comparison it seems like a fair chunk of work actually went into the multiplayer balancing and functionality that has basically nothing to do with how the game plays in story mode.
It's obviously working since the game has millions of active players. My only complaint is that, for a game that costs like 90 bucks at the base level (Canadian), it would have been nice if the story was maybe another hour or two? That being said, I'd rather a video game tell a tight, good story than throw in content padding just for the sake of saying the game is longer.
I've been solo-playing the PvE content and it's pretty good. Obviously it's really designed to be played with real people, but I found that to be hit-and-miss. I'm not good at video games, as I've often said. I don't claim to be a GOOD team member. But I try. Some people are the same as me. Some are just insanely good and I feel terrible dragging the team down. Some people are utterly selfish assholes and actively make the game harder. After a bunch of different games I just started playing with AI companions. Problem is - they're VERY basic and you do have to do a lot of the important stuff yourself, making it a bit overwhelming even at lower difficulties.
I'll also say that it's a weird game mode. Designed around a class system obviously so every single player isn't using the exact same stuff. But like... there is definitively better options for each class, so it's not like there's gonna be tons of variety anyway. And the reward system is SOOOO FUCKING STINGY that it can take forever to feel like you're making any progress. Especially if you, GASP, ever lose a run. Might as well have just flagellated yourself for 45 minutes instead, for all the progress you get from that.
Like, obviously the whole PvE/PvP experience is tailored around being able to paint your minis. But you have to 'buy' (in-game currency, thankfully) practically every customization element. If you're going for specific looks, that can mean replaying missions over and over and over again before you feel like you're really getting anywhere, and that's tough.
Still very fun. The power fantasy is real. Carving through endless hordes of enemies as a borderline demi-god is super fun. The weapons feel good to use. The game looks beautiful (weird word to use when the game map is mostly covered in gore a few seconds in...). And lots of improvements and expansions are supposedly on the way.
It's way too expensive if you're only coming into the game for the campaign mode, which was actually my original plan. I like the gameplay enough to want to play with the PvE for a bit. But if you only want to play the campaign and move on -- 100 bucks feels steep. Although.. the ability to play PvE with bot companions, and choose even the easiest difficulty for those missions, means that PvE CAN feel as much like a campaign expansion (because the missions take place during the main story -- you're playing as a secondary team) as like an 'online' component. So.. YMMV, but I think it's a fantastic game definitely worth playing if you're even remotely into this kind of stuff.
I beat Half-Life 2 and its DLCs, Burnout Paradise, and tried Bully since my last check-in.
I'm not breaking new ground here: Half-Life 2 is excellent. The whole experience took me around 26 hours. If I had one complaint, it's the length. Like The Last of Us Part II, the game needed an editor. As someone who was raised on Halo, a series with games between eight and 10 hours, I find longer shooters exhausting. Whereas I'm due for another Halo series playthrough, I can only see myself going back to Half-Life and Half-Life 2 once or twice more time in my lifetime. Linear games don't need to be that long.
I had the itch to play a Burnout game, so I bought Burnout Paradise on Steam for like $2. My only experience with Burnout was Burnout 3 when it first came out. I get that the new hotness in racing games (this game came out 17 years ago, heh) is an open world where you drive between races, but I prefer selecting a race from the menu and going from there. Don't make me drive around the same locations to find a race. Unnecessary open-world element aside, it's a lot of fun.
I'm not a Rockstar Games aficionado, but I respect what they do. I beat GTA IV and V and both RDR games. I always wanted to play Bully but my mom wouldn't let me buy the game when it released in 2006. I finally remedied that a couple months ago. The game needs a full remake. I would've liked to see it out, but there were too many frustrating quality-of-life issues. I gave up a few hours in.
Finally, Avowed. Obsidian is one of my two or three favorite developers; I think they're this era's BioWare. I've been eagerly anticipating this game for a long time. In open-world games, I tend to go through the main story first and hit any interesting side quests when I'm done. I'm not doing that here. I'm about seven hours in, and I'm savoring this one. We don't get high-quality Western fantasy RPGs that often. I'm exploring every nook and cranny and completing as much side content as possible.
This sounds hyperbolic, but I think procedurally generated worlds have ruined open-world gaming. Enemies aren't placed with care. Treasure isn't placed intentionally to reward eagle-eyed gamers. (This is another Starfield subtweet.) That isn't the case in Avowed. The world is a lot smaller, but the level design is deliberate. Random boss encounters feel special. Treasure is everywhere and exploration is rewarded.
Speaking of Bethesda, my favorite gaming memory might be exploring Oblivion for the first time. That was my first big-ass fantasy RPG and I still look back on it fondly. I'm getting whiffs of that here. Exploration is a joy. The combat feels great. The world is wondrous. The reviews I watched criticized the writing, particularly the companions and story predictability. I can't speak to that yet, but I'm impressed so far. The dialogue is funny. I only have two of the game's four companions, but I like one of them a lot.
If I had one complaint, I'm not sure I agree with their choice to set this in the Pillars of Eternity universe. I get it. PoE had a decent player base. The lore is written. But PoE is fucking weird. It's complex and strange. I think they might've been better served with a paint-by-numbers Elden Scrolls-style standard fantasy setting. I'm sure I'll have more feelings about it as I go.
I played Fable and Ultimate Alliance on the original Xbox 15-20 years ago and then stopped gaming almost entirely. For Christmas the "family" got a Switch and I've been playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. This is my first real open world game and I was not prepared for the expansive elements. I spent the first week feral, just wandering the hills and caves trying to figure out the controls. I've spent a lot of hours playing and I feel like I've barely made any real progress. I'm undecided on whether that's good or bad.
One thing that is terribly clear, there are no instructions in the game material and finding anything online takes forever. There's a lot of on-screen status information, but no explanation on what that translates to.
For example, in the inventory some weapons show a sparkle effect but I don't know what that means. There's a gauge on the screen that it took me forever to realize measured environmental temperatures.
It's a really fun game now that I have some equipment and am getting used to all the buttons.
@red_ogre I loved Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom was my most anticipated game of the decade after that. I played it for about 4 hours and got hit with the most intense case of vertigo and motion sickness. I think it was doing the shrines. Never got it from any game before, even VR. It was so bad someone had to drive me to the doctor and I was incapacitated for about 3 days after. I did some reading online and I guess I wasn't the only one that had it.
I have since learned that turning off gyro may fix it so someday I'm going to try again but I'm scared to death it'll knock me on my back for 3 days again if it doesn't work.
I had a tiny bit of that early on and was really worried. I am usually pretty susceptible to motion sickness but it hasn't last long and I've avoided spiraling the camera while I'm playing. So far, so good....
The problem @red_ogre is describing feels, to me, like a much larger overall problem with modern gaming; developers aren't necessarily doing the best job of onboarding new players and more and more games seem like they're tailored more toward the 'we don't have to tell you, because you already know how this works' crowd, and a lot of the tutorial elements in games are rushed across the screen at breakneck pace just to say they're there, even though no reasonable person can even digest it all unless they -already know how it all works- on a general level.
Like, I'm playing two games right now; Space Marine 2 and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. These are both sequels with a lot of time since their previous installments. SM2 is definitely the -far- simpler game, and has FAR less consequences to messing up. Maybe you die and have to restart a mission. Or don't get any experience for a PvE mission you spent 25 minutes on.
KCD2 can punish you for a bad decision six fucking hours LATER, and treats you like shit for wanting to just be able to save the game whenever. KCD2 is way more complicated, and as such its onboarding isn't great. I missed a few things in the opening hours and I ALREADY KNOW HOW TO PLAY.
What I appreciate about the tutorial elements of KCD2 that many, many other games could learn from is that you can turn them off if you want, but if you choose not to, then they stay on the screen until you dismiss them. I can't tell you how much that would have helped me in some other games I played where I couldn't even register the presence of, and read, the tutorial fast enough before it was already gone.
Anyway.. blah blah typical video game industry complaints and Bethesda sucks.
@tsi I would like to play Avowed, but I won't be able to for a long time. I'm still enjoying the hell out of SM2, and all my RPG energy is going into KCD2 and probably will continue to do so for at least a couple more months. Excited to give it a try, though. My first wow memory from an RPG of this nature was actually Daggerfall. Blew me away at the time. One of my favorite things about Dragon Age: Veilguard was the tailor-made level design, that rewards exploration and can actively choose how to design enemy encounters within a map. That game FELT really good in that way. I was pretty happy to hear Avowed, despite its visual similarities to Bethesda, wouldn't be going the procedural route that literally made Starfield one of the worst games I've ever played.
Also, hard agree about using the Pillars setting. Even as a pretty hardcore fantasy fan, I find the Pillars setting obtuse and off-putting and I'd actually rather not play in the setting, if given the choice.
As an aside about Space Marine 2 - the Devs are absolutely fucking killing it with updates and fixes to the game. I don't have hardcore-gamer time on my hands, so I love playing the game but don't ever get crazy good at it. Changing the item leveling system to allow lower-tier armory points to be combined to make higher tier ones, thereby allowing any skill level of player to end up with Relic (gold) tier weapons? Perfect. Love it. There's been a few missteps - like the new enemy type introducing a bug that spawns WAY too many spores and is fucking infuriating to deal with. But everything from how DLC/skins are handled (the game doesn't feel overloaded with microtransactions and there's no random loot bullshit) to just the general feel of the gameplay is just so much fun. Haven't enjoyed just zoning out to a shooty bashy game this much in a long time, I think.
I came around on Breath of the Wild. I recently added it to my favorite games list. But a lot of what I love about Breath of the Wild is the idea of Breath of the Wild as opposed to the experience I had with it.
A game that lets you set out for the big scary volcano the second you finish the (overly long) tutorial is cool. That's a great idea. Let the player explore. Let them wander. Let them choose their next adventure.
The puzzles are challenging. The combat is good. It should make for an ideal game.
That said, I felt the same way Red Ogre did. The game doesn't explain its systems well. There's a happy medium between a Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring (games that explain nothing) and a Ubisoft experience (something that holds your hand every step of the way, whether you want it to or not). It can be rewarding to figure something out with little guidance. It can just as easily lead to frustration, though.
If I wasn't accustomed to looking up solutions online or if I hadn't gamed in 20 years, I know how Breath of the Wild would've made me feel. I metagamed getting the Master Sword because I was sick of my weapons breaking all the time and I know how that made me feel. I have to complete how many shrines??
The game is too big. It takes 50.5 hours to beat Breath of the Wild. It takes 193 hours to 100% it. You can 100% God of War 2018 in the same amount of time it takes to beat Breath of the Wild. Of the two of them, Breath of the Wild is the game with little dialogue or story.
I'm extremely OCD about beating games once I start them. Now that I've beaten Breath of the Wild, I could see myself starting another playthrough and experiencing it like everyone else. Let me set out for the scary volcano first instead of snatching up the Master Sword and mainlining the story. It's a nice little fantasy that allows me to imagine having a normal brain.
There are several expansive games I'd love to play. The Persona series. Metaphor: ReFantazio. The Xenoblade series. Several Final Fantasy games. All of them, coincidentally, from Japanese developers. I commit a lot of time to gaming. I could play these games if I wanted to and probably beat them in 4-6 weeks. But they take advantage of my time. They need an editor.
Which leads me to Avowed.
Haven't enjoyed just zoning out to a shooty bashy game this much in a long time, I think.
In part because they don't make them anymore. They're loaded with microtransactions or unnecessary online systems. I think there's a real market for stuff like Avowed and Space Marine 2 now. Gamers have grown tired of every C-Suite moron trying to squeeze every last dollar from them.
And finishing my point on Breath of the Wild, you know what's great? A contained experience. Tell me a complete story in 20 hours. Leave me wanting more for once in my godforsaken life.
I'm about 30 hours into Avowed now. I'm still flummoxed by the 7/10, middling review scores. I'm at an 8.5/9 right now.
I've been racking my brain thinking about my RPG experiences over the last decade. For a game like this—a big, quality, open-world, single-player RPG—there haven't been as many as you think.
- Fallout 4
- RDR2
- The Outer Worlds ?
- Divinity: Original Sin II
- BG3
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Witcher 3 (barely makes the cut)
- Starfield
- Horizon Zero Dawn
- Zelda Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom
Does Death Stranding count? Does Spider-Man? God of War? Final Fantasy VII? Elden Ring? I don't think so, but I wouldn't begrudge you for including them.
I'd put Avowed somewhere in the middle. It's not as good as the Larian games or Breath of the Wild. I personally like it more than the Zelda games, Cyberpunk, or RDR2. That's more about personal preference than quality, though. I find it far more memorable than HZD. I put 40 hours into that game and can't remember a single quest. I'm about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through Avowed and I've already played two all-time quests (Dawntreader and Steel Resolve).
For me, it's a mix of Mass Effect, Fable, and Oblivion. The world is smaller and it's more companion/quest-focused like Mass Effect. It's goofy and colorful like Fable. And like Oblivion, there's fascinating stuff at every turn. Jason Schreier interviewed the game's director about its development. The game was rebooted multiple times and the final version was developed in just four years. I love the game, but you can definitely tell.
While there are interesting environments at every turn, usually they contain the same blue- or purple-glowing chest. The chests almost always have a weak weapon and several crafting materials inside. The enemy variety is poor. There are spiders, lizard-men, skeletons, bandits, the occasional bug, and a spoiler-type in the late game. That's really about it. I can never tell what wonder is going to cross my path next, but I can guarantee you it'll be guarded by lizard-men and contain a hidden treasure chest.
It's a video game-ass video game. They removed a lot of systems I find detrimental to modern RPGs. No real encumbrance system, weapons breaking, or crime/stealing system. That stuff isn't additive, it's frustrating. As a TTRPG DM, my brain is always trying to process the difference. What's the value of adding a system for the sake of adding a system?
I think, at 30 hours, I'm starting to feel some fatigue around the treasure/enemy system. Fight a mob, recover some treasure, do some parkour, find some more treasure. There are a few distinct collectibles in the game to break up the monotony, but probably not enough. My brain still lights up when I find and open the treasure chest (game design 101), but it's diminishing returns.
On the plus side, the companions are fantastic. Kai, voiced by Mass Effect's Garrus, is one of my favorite companions ever. He's not wacky like most memorable companions. He's sincere and compassionate. I hate the second companion because he's an asshole. A well-written asshole. The third companion is dealing with a ton of personal trauma and is all the more fascinating for it. The last companion is a horny, drunk aunt. The next thing out of her mouth always surprises me and often cracks me up.
It's one of the few games with ambient character dialogue that's always additive. The companions don't shout the same three catchphrases at you (except in battle). They provide genuine insight. There aren't Skyrim-level's of NPCs walking around and living their lives, but you will encounter conversations and debates across the world. They all feel lived-in and real.
Exploring the environments is spectacular. As I said like four times, you never know what you're going to see next. A giant skeleton? A beautiful garden? An ancient ruin? The dungeons are also fantastic. There aren't many, and because of that, they all feel unique. You explore caves, trapped tombs, and secret bases. I often find myself rushing through games by the 30 hour mark. Avowed makes me want to take my time. There's real craft in this game.
The story hasn't really surprised me yet, but the writing is excellent. There's no cringey dialogue or out-of-character lines. Everything here feels like it was made by professionals. It's giving Mass Effect 1. It's not perfect, but the bones of something really excellent are here.
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