Yeah, GoT was something else. I played on hard for most of the game, but had to reduce the difficulty for a few fights (duels), especially one I got into early on (the tengu monk) that was exceptionnally brutal on hard given I basically has just starting gear (or rather, the bare minimum to reach that quest).

The combat in Ghost of Tsushima is just so satisfying. Miles ahead of any Assassins Creed game and I really enjoyed Odyssey. I played it on hard and it's really fun, it's a bit more challenging and punishing if you make mistakes but never overwhelming.

I'm trying to finish Kingdom Come (for the 3rd time) and I'm having a really difficult time in doing so. The game is just a huge mess. For each great and innovative idea there are three or four aspects of the game that are completely broken. The story is very bland and uninteresting too and I couldn't care less for any of the characters. I've played 100h into this game and only managed to make it to the main quest 15 out of 29. I always get bored around this part of the story and stop playing. It still feels unfinished and poorly optimized after 5 years of it's release.

Farcry: New Dawn is heavily discounted on Steam. Can anyone recommend it? I enjoyed playing Farcry 5 but I wasn't a great fan of the ending.

The combat in Ghost of Tsushima is great for sure, but the combat in Assassin's Creed has been really good too since Origins. That's when the controls turned to more Dark Souls style, not as precise controlling as Souls for sure, but with more cool special moves because they're AAA action games. The games have different aims, which I feel the more hardcore inclined tend to not appreciate about AC. With From Software games and Ghost of Tsushima you can get deep into the nitty gritty of mastering the controls and techniques, while later AssCreed's combat is not as deep and demands less commitment but give you more cinematic spectacle while also feeling satisfying and well controlling enough. As much as I love Sekiro and appreciate how beautifully it controls, that game put me through an incredible amount of stress to the point of spilling over into non-gaming things. AssCreed meanwhile is an accessible, lean back and just take in the world affair, and except for some pretty horrific bosses it's mostly just hack, slash, going "whoa!" at some special moves and to that end that I think the combat works perfect.

Earlier AssCreed games had truly terrible combat I think, but you were meant to avoid it, because they had a way bigger focus on stealth. Black Flag had you boarding other ships regularly, though, and had the same old bad controls so I'm not sure what they were thinking there. Still did enjoy that game a great deal in the end.

Yeah, the latest AC games have fun combat. Not as good as GoT or anything but it's evident the focus is more on action than stealth now. Which suits me fine, I'm better at that. Though I do miss the parts about pickpocketing or eavesdropping from the early games.

In other news, Jason Shreier just showed what many suspected: the development of Cyberpunk was just as shitty as that of Anthem, and the higher ups fucked the shit up big time. The parts that sand out for me include the fact that devs thought the April 2020 date was a joke, as they expected the game to ship in 2022, the fact that the 2018 E3 trailer was a complete fabrication (they took months of dev time to create a fake trailer to hype the game instead of, you know, developing the game) and the fact that they added cops at the very last minute, as devs were flabbergasted that the managemenbt expected them to do a GTA RPG with a fraction of the devs. Also, the part about devs not being forced to do overtime was a lie, it was "you don't have to if you find another on your team who's willing to". Ew.

I'm so glad I got a refund. I feel bad for the devs, but the company doesn't deserve my money, and at this point, I don't care anymore if they fix it. Maybe I'll change my mind later, but for now I have no intention of re-purchasing it once they fixed it. If I do, I'll do it second-hand.

Yeah, not saying the last couple of AC games have bad combat, just that Ghost of Tsushima does everything the AC Games do (in terms of combat) a lot better. Odyssey combat was pretty fun thanks to the new abilities and the spear but he stealth was also super fun. Origin was OK and Valhalla is fine but it still needs a bit of improvement imho. The combat is just too easy, most enemies die with just a few strikes even on the highest difficulty and then you face some enemies that are ultra hard. The new abilities aren't as interesting though. It's not properly balanced yet, that's all. I get it, it's not Dark Souls but they managed a pretty god equilibrium in Odyssey. It was challenging and still fun. This time around it's fun but not as well executed.

The whole Cyberpunk debacle... It turned out great on PC even though it was a complete disaster. I think it could have been the best game of this generation and I think he devs really had something great going on but everything eventually went to shit. Honestly, they are to blame but their shareholders are the people I'm really mad at. They knew the game wasn't ready and didn't care. Sure, the devs could have been more honest and transparent about what was going on but this was a no-no situation. The worst part is the game is still pretty damn good. Here's hoping the idea of turning it into the next "no man's sky" isn't just a rumour and they eventually keep adding stuff. If GTAV has been around for 7 years this game could easily go for 3-4 years getting amazing updates. I really hope they do because as I said, it's already a good game. It just needed another year in development.

I'm with ya on that one, really brought about that stealth theme. As much as I love the last 3 games and all the new features & abilities, I'd love to see those traditional type of missions return where you need to build a case against your next target.

Anyone have a recommendation for a mobile game that isn't a complete turd?

Like a stand alone game, well crafted, single player strategy/RPG/4X- rather than the model of daily login, time waste, f2p but p2w multiplayer stuff. Or have any reviews on something like the mobile version of Baldur's Gate? I love that game (and the Infinity Engine in general), but I'm a bit skeptical how well it would translate over, what with the real-time element.

For point of reference Banner Saga and Shadownrun Returns are the best games mobile games I've played. Tactical is cool though I would love something 4X, Civilization or Master of Orion 2 kinda stuff.

Y'all, Devolver did it again. If you love 2D action games with clever movement and fluid mechanics please give Olija a chance.

I bought it today and sunk 3 hours in without blinking. It doesn't hold your hand, similar to the way Hyper Light Drifter did it. The movement gimmick is basically the grappling hook from Sekiro (here its a harpoon though cause nautical theme) but it connects to enemies as well as environmental points. This combined with a rapier leads to some REALLY fluid and flashy combat. If you try it out, experiment with the controls. You can alter your attacks with up and down inputs.

Everything about the game is charming and it really has stolen all my attention away from Cyber Shadow. That game deserves a post of its own but I haven't made it far enough to comment. The difficulty level is extreme almost immediately and it caught me off guard.

^Thanks for the recommendation, dude.

I hadn't heard of this, but it seems like the Jonpo style game which usually agrees with me.

Hope you love it man! Let me know how it grabs you, if you try it, no pressure though. I've heard some reviews saying it's about a 4 hour game, so pretty short. I put 3 hours in and felt like I was "Just getting started". I can't wait to get off work today and put some more hours in. If I'm near the end it won't be long until I play it from the beginning again. The combat/movement is very addicting to me.

lol no. Everything about it is just braindead, starting from the stupid writing. Turd of the generation for sure.

Your brilliant arguments have convinced me, thanks for your input on the matter.

I'm playing a game based on Little Witch Academia that I got off Steam for, like, $2. It's an aRPG. It's fine. It's okay.

The characters and the voice acting and the dialogue are phenomenal, as I had hoped, but the gameplay itself is just...there. It's fine.

...nearly three years after its release, and almost a year after the update that completely redesigned how builds work, I've finally found a well-balanced pulse-based build in Division 2. And a solid bleed-focused one. And now I'm realizing the possibilities of an Obliterate/Clutch build, especially with the Vile mask to boost CHC.

NOTHING LIKE HAVING NO TIME TO GAME BETWEEN WORK AND AN INFANT TO FIGURE THIS SHIT OUT.

Shit, I must have put close to 1000 hours in Division 2 when it first came out. I played it non-stop for like a year. Awesome game. Can't wait to see what 3 will look like on PS5.

I haven't liked it as much since they changed how builds work around TU6, back when every piece of gear would have its own talent and weapons would have three each (active, holstered, and equipped). The change to only chest pieces, backpacks, and gear set/exotic gear having talents and each weapon only having one (active) talent, hurt the gameplay.

I got used to stacking Bloodsucker, Spark, and Concussion talents with a P416 spec'd to CHC/CHD with an equipped talent that boosted CHD on repeated hits. Even going into the DZ was a breeze against shotgun builds because I'd melt them the moment I saw them. The switch happened because of the PVP side, and it only allowed worse exploitation of existing bugs while killing build diversity until around TU10. The remaining playerbase is so small compared to what it was...

...but fuck, do I love it still. Gonna try that Obliterate/Clutch build as soon as I can.

Definitely should not have had that kid.

This might be a "me" thing, but the thought of this honestly makes my stomach turn. I don't know for sure if No Man's Sky was the first to do it, but I feel like they were the biggest name that set the biggest precedent for this practice and I absolutely loathe it. It feels like we've entered an era where certain titles are just "too big to fail". No Man's Sky delivered way less than was promised and was critically panned for hyping up a bunch of bullshit they knew wasn't going to be in the game and was ultimately released in a practically unfinished state. The kicker here is that that was only the opening chapter to the story, because the developers stuck with it and kept patching in more and more shit until years later it finally resembled what was promised years before, and they were lauded for it. On the surface that sounds great! They fucked up so they worked hard to make it right.

My issue is that this keeps happening now. Final Fantasy XIV was famously so badly botched upon launch that there is now a canonical extinction level event in the game's narrative that wiped out the original gameworld and completely rebooted it, and now years later it's one of the biggest MMOs on the market. Fallout 76 was a Dumpster Fire Decathalon that Bethesda refused to move on from and now from what I hear it's pretty solid. Apex Legends was supposed to be the big PUBG/Fortnite-killer but it absolutely sucked, and now like two years later I have a few friends who play every day and insist it's awesome now. If I'm not mistaken this same thing happened with Destiny and The Division (or maybe their sequels, I'm not sure). On a more personal note, I played Final Fantasy XV before the DLCs and the Royal Edition came out and thought the fact that it was clearly unfinished was accidentally brilliant, because by being forced to let so many major events happen offscreen they wound up telling a story about a hero who missed all of his Big Damn Hero moments and suffered brutal consequences because he was too busy goofing off. Now it's "complete" (only sorta, they cancelled the remaining DLCs when the director left so it's still technically unfinished) and it's... just kind of a regular decent game now.

The point is that it's now not just acceptable, but completely normalized to build up a ton of hype, collect millions in preorders and day one purchases, only to release a buggy, unfinished, functionally early-access version of a game and then just fix it later. CDPR faced tons of backlash for Cyberpunk being the shitheap it was but you're far from the first person I've seen express this sentiment, either gritting their teeth or accepting it as-is with the hope/knowledge that it will be fixed and good eventually. It's not that I want games to be bad, it's that I don't want it to become routine that people are suckered into paying full price for shit that should have never been pulled out of the oven.

Then there's also the inevitable flipside of undercooked games getting released and then almost immediately dropped by the devs. I feel like this phenomenon is exactly what Koei was expecting with Berserk and the Band of the Hawk. I get it, musou games are really niche and Koei will never rake in CDPR/Squeenix/Ubisoft money, but Berserk has characters in the game with the clear intent of being made playable at some point in the near future, the back half is insanely repetitive (even for a musou game), and the polish and production value plummets off a cliff at that halfway mark, it's really not a stretch at all to figure out that they likely assumed they'd be able to just go back and add/fix shit later since everybody does that now. But like I said, Koei is smaller than the big dogs and the genre they specialize in is super niche, so the game flopped on release, never made much money, and was quickly abandoned and left in a permanently unfinished state. So now I paid full price for a game that has a ton of promise that will never be realized because why bother actually finishing shit before it's released nowadays?

tl;dr - I'm not really sure if I've properly verbalized my apprehension or if I'm even really able to at all, but I find this trend really worrying and I fully expect games that are actually finished in some concrete way to be an increasing rarity as time goes on.

CAVEAT: I don't really game all that much anymore. I don't really have the free time, I've never been into multiplayer, every post I've made here in the last decade has been on a laptop that I bought used in 2010 so PC gaming is absolutely out of the question, and my PS4 has spent probably 300x more hours streaming Netflix and Hulu than it ever has playing games. I play maybe 1-2 new games each year, and most of my gaming time is spent with either older games I play on an emulator or an old console, or are remasters/remakes of games I already liked from 10-25 years ago when I actually had enough time to play. I own five physical PS4 games, three of them are Final Fantasy titles, one is the Shadow of the Colossus remake, and one is Nioh... which I got as a gift and never got particularly far into because I'm notoriously bad at any game that takes heavy influence from the Soulsborne games. So if you want to refute/disregard everything I said up there, feel free. I'm well aware this isn't my area of expertise anymore.

He's the easy part. Mummy getting indignant when I dare take some time to myself every few days is the killer.

Also, the Obliterate/Clutch build is a good pairing.

What game or perhaps movie has a story where its revealed someone is really a leech person or some other such nonsense? Not as normal as crab or lizard person

It might be anime come to think of it, idk read about it on reddit once

....Wat

It seems I can only ask questions that this board cannot answer. I still haven't found the fucked up manga I was looking for which garnered a similar response. I was with my best friend when he bought it! Cant ask him.



Well goddamn the fucking answer came to me out of nowhere about the leech person. It's Resident Evil Zero!

https://residentevil.fandom.com/wiki/Queen_Leech

You also ask really, really fucking weird questions

Took advantage of a Steam sale, and a Steam voucher gifted to me, to buy all 3 Borderlands games, plus Need For Speed: Heat. I'm very excited to start playing them. I haven't played any NFS since Underground 2 way back in...holy crap, 2004...so I'm interested to see how this one holds up.

I'm currently playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild on my PC and some of the textures haven't aged that well but other than that it's a fantastic game so far.

I had no idea playing that on PC was possible? But then again I don't know anything about PC gaming But anyway, have a blast dude, an absolute masterpiece of a game.

As for myself, I'm back into Dark Souls.

Played through DS2 again last month as a big dumb strength build (two-handed the demon hammer) and had a blast. Man, the Crown of the Old Iron King DLC is totally one of the best parts of the whole series. It's like a massive Zelda dungeon, and then Fume Knight is just pure boss perfection.

Now I'm doing DS3 as a pyromancer, which is a build I've never touched. Loving it! It's crazy how entirely different combat is as a spell caster. It made the beginning of the game pretty hard, but now that I'm a good way in I feel pretty damn OP.

You can using an emulator. Game runs 60fps 4K with no hassle if you know how to optimize it.

And yeah, I agree. DS2 DLCs are easily the best part of the game. I'm still not really into the idea of enemies not spawning after a while though. They should have just stopped dropping EXP if they didn't want people to farm. Glad they dropped it for DS3.

I'm not really bothered by that mechanic. You have to farm the area pretty thoroughly before they despawn (which is just something I never do), and you can also use a Bonfire Ascetic to replenish them. I find the permanent health loss of each death/Human Effigy mechanic more misguided. I just don't really know what they were going for there. If you're experienced with the Souls games then you're probably not going to be hindered too badly, but I can easily see that being a nightmare for people who play DS2 as their first one. I'm glad that was dropped for DS3.

I just beat DS3 as my first Souls game towards the beginning of quarantine. I’ve been playing DS2 most recently and while I was I was initially annoyed at the Human Effigy mechanic, I’ve just never bothered to use one and just beefed up my stats to compensate, to the point where it hasn’t ever been a problem. I might use one if I have to face a particularly challenging boss, but I’m close to the end of the game now and I haven’t needed to yet, so I may just end up never using it.

That's what I did too. Also that ring that gives you 75% life instead of 50%.

Scholars of the First Sin was my first Souls experience and probably still my favorite to this day, unless you count Sekiro. There was just such a wonderment to discovery. And I 100% farmed those big bastards in the weird water world. I have forgotten the name of everything. It's like the third place you go if you're taking the caveman obvious route.

Tonight was the first time I've ever dismantled a video game controller. I couldn't fix the problem, but I WAS disgusted and amused to learn that the back triggers are all lubed up! It's a dirt-cheap controller so I guess that goop must be industry standard? It was revolting in both sight and texture until I realized what was on me, to be honest. Exact color and consistency of bacon grease.

After not played these games in years, I'm doing a Resident Evil binge. I picked up all but RE 7 on PSN for pretty cheap. I'll get 7 when it's a bit cheaper. I've got to the end of RE 2 (Remake). Started playing RE 0. I want to try to beat them all before Village comes out.