Coelacanth

Finished the Alan Wake 2 DLCs. Enjoyed them very much. The first two Night Springs episodes I thought were kind of so-so, but the third one was great and really had Remedy stretch their creative legs and both flex some mixed media usage and fully signal that Quantum Break is a part of the Remedyverse, at least in spirit. The Lake House DLC was just an excellent little horror episode, amazing atmosphere and gameplay while also being a very sharp criticism of AI art, which while perhaps not subtle I can still agree with and appreciate.

I also played through about 70% of the first Banner Saga. I have very mixed feelings about this game. The art, music, story, writing and world building are all excellent. It’s a very pretty game. I just… I don’t really vibe with the combat. The way the turn based system works and the way the damage stat and HP stat being unified plays out just makes fights end up kind of… weird. It’s very different from most games and I’m not really finding it that enjoyable. I haven’t played it in a few days now but I might just turn it down to Easy and breeze through it so I can see how the story goes.

Yes, this is it right here. The whole point of art is communication and connection with another human being.

If you can’t find an invite there I can probably sort you out.

I thought so too at first, but I actually don’t think the movement aspect of Deadlock would feel as good in first person.

Interesting failure states has to be one of the most difficult things to implement in game design. To this day I struggle to think of many examples besides Disco Elysium that manage to discourage save scumming purely by virtue of having failed rolls often lead to equally or more beneficial and interesting results as successful rolls.

Ah, that makes sense! Damn I wish Itagaki was still with us. That might make me actually wishlist this game, though. I played Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time recently (also by Soleil, the last game Itagaki was involved in) and was pretty positively surprised by it.

Gives me Ninja Gaiden 2 vibes, only with less aggressive enemies.

I think TALKER Expanded is in a stable and decent enough state to take a little break, which I sorely need honestly. Been burning out a bit on it lately. So this week I will finally be playing some games.

First on the docket is the Lake House DLC for Alan Wake 2. I was in the middle of playing the DLCs when I got sidetracked into this project. After that I’ll get into one of my Christmas games, either Chrono Ark or The Banner Saga. Might play both depending on how long they are and how much of a break I need. Leaning on starting with the Banner Saga.

It’s your funeral, pretty sure the Steam version still comes with SecuROM DRM - if it even launches. No clue how that DRM plays with Linux, either tbh.

Get it from GOG, download the Echo Patch and make sure to play the first expansion too (which is included), called Extraction Point. I think it’s even better than the base game actually. Definitely DON’T play the second expansion, and in fact probably just pretend the series ended after Extraction Point.

The game absolutely holds up, still plays like a dream. One of the best FPSes of all time for sure, great combat with good AI and fantastic gunplay from most of the arsenal (apart from a strangely anemic assault rifle). Also looks remarkably good for its age - some of the distortion effects especially like bullet traces during Bullet Time or shockwave ripples from explosions look surprisingly good for a 2005 release.

You can also jump through some extra hoops to make EAX audio work but it’s a bit of a headache.

“Spiritual successor to F.E.A.R.” was all they had to say to get me on board, but my backlog is still too large to pick it up unless on deep sale.

Trepang2 is high on my wishlist, but that’s about all I’m familiar with on this list. Anyone else can comment on any of the rest of the games? Is this worthwhile?

Still barely gaming as I’ve been spending my time on my mod making project instead. I’ve been playing Chaos Zero Nightmare a bit on my phone though and it continues to be a guilty pleasure. Can’t say I condone gacha monetisation, can’t say I love all the character designs, can’t say the story isn’t terrible and the English translation is amateurish. All that being said, the roguelike deckbuilder gameplay is actually just really good. The dopamine hits of unlocking rare card variations during runs and making new builds work just keep me coming back.

I did end up buying two new games for myself on the Steam Sale as a Christmas present: Chrono Ark and The Banner Saga. I’ve had my eye on them for a long time, and so I’m looking forward to getting to a point in the mod making where I can take a break from it and actually play some games.

Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword is a surprisingly amazing DS game where you hold the DS in portrait mode like a book and control your character with the stylus. I played it this year and was very positively surprised by it.

The amount of fights wouldn’t be so bad either if the encounter design wasn’t so bad. Especially towards the endgame it just felt like Owlcat absolutely hate their players. Both HATEOT and the endgame sucked, and that’s coming from someone who was earned beforehand to put Blind Fight on every single character. That being said there were parts I really enjoyed - the whole Vordakai arc was great I thought.

Shame to hear that about the story. That’s the part that always made me hesitant about WotR too - I tend to prefer more grounded narratives over epic godslaying adventures.

Damn, very sad to hear WotR was a disappointment for you. I also had similarly mixed feelings about Kingmaker, but I was looking forward to WotR as everyone was saying it’s so much better.

Could also be a case of Michał Kiciński truly believing in the mission statement of GOG and wanting to free the organisation of any shareholders to be beholden to so that GOG can operate at near-breakeven if need be instead of having to maximise profits to please shareholders.

This is of course giving him a massive benefit of the doubt, but I guess I still have a sliver of hope for humanity somewhere in my rotten applecore of a heart.

That’s sick too! Very nice build!

That’s very pretty! I love unconventional pc case builds like this.

Ooh not bad! I had that one on my wishlist and was considering grabbing it on the Steam sale.