Coelacanth

AW2 is worth it. Don’t deprive yourself of the experience, it’s a memorable one. I understand the hoops though, but trust me it’s worth holding your nose and getting an Epic account. It’s still to this day my one and only purchase on Epic, and I don’t regret it one bit.

All that makes sense with Disco Elysium. Also I’m sorry about your eye, that must be an awful thing to go through. Very understandable with the eye fatigue and reading though. There is a lot of it, even after the voice acting update.

As far as heavy themes and all, I can’t say much without spoiling stuff but I will say this: the game somehow does strike a strange kind of balance where it ends up feeling oddly hopeful, even in the face of nihilism. It slightly depends on how you play it, granted. The Communism playthrough for example is a lot more hopeful than the Fascism run (although the latter is also very interesting and doesn’t play out the way you’d think).

I struggle with depression and self loathing and being unable to move on from the past and have struggled with addiction in the past, and Disco Elysium is one of the most cathartic experiences I’ve had in any medium of culture.

I think you’re spot on about Alan Wake, it has a cool story and some good ideas but feels pretty clunky to play. The sameness of the levels doesn’t help, either. American Nightmare plays well if you can overlook the low budget of being an Xbox Live Marketplace game. Plus it has some cool manuscript pages and lore elements and Ilka Villi absolutely slays as Mr Scratch in the FMV clips. Very interested to hear your thoughts on AW2. For me it’s by far the best game Remedy ever made, and probably in my all-time top 3.

Shame you’re not clocking with Hellblade, it’s a game I really enjoyed but it does have its shortcomings. For me all the elements kind of worked, and even though the puzzle mechanics weren’t amazing I allowed the game to be carried by the concept pretty far. The whole “seeing patterns where there are none in reality” being another manifestation of psychosis was neat. Also if you do want to finish it, the game is very short so there is probably less of it left than you think if you want to push through. I did personally like the ending, but maybe not worth it if it’s not clicking.

What made you bounce off Disco Elysium before? I agree with you that it’s probably the best game of all time, but I also do see people bounce off it frequently. Always interested in hearing people’s thoughts on it.

The hard lock is particularly egregious I agree. I also dislike moon logic but I chalk that up to “those were the times” as well. Back in those days strategy guides and phone-based help lines for adventure/puzzle games were common and making games inscrutable and puzzles impossibly idiotic were seen as a value-add to extend playtime on your purchase.

As far as the humour, one thing that stood out to me (besides the multitude of variously juvenile sex jokes) was that there was a little bit of a mean-spirited streak in the writing. At the end of the day Larry is not a bad or evil guy, he is a naive loser. And a large part of the game is kind of making fun of him for that, and something about that doesn’t sit right with me.

I also played Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded I think last year or the year before and have similar thoughts. I know it’s a famous title/franchise and I wanted to check it out, and it was pretty much what I expected. I really hated the forced gambling-via-savescumming but it was otherwise an alright point and click puzzler with hit-or-miss humour.

I have half an idea of playing Love For Sail too at some point as that’s supposedly the series high point, but it’s not exactly a high priority.

I remember SLI! Those were fun times. With today’s prices I’m glad the concept never amounted to anything, though.

F.E.A.R. was eventually fixed. I’m pretty sure only the multiplayer.exe. still has DRM. I played it recently including the expansion and it was just fine.

The only black-and-white rule is: if you’re buying an older game you should always buy it on GOG. No exceptions. There’s too many retro games on Steam that won’t even launch on modern machines, and beyond that GOG is typically very good at including fan made patches and fixes into their versions of old games, ensuring older games actually work and are just plug-and-play.

If that’s the case I can’t really fault Valve here.

Wouldn’t surprise that much, as far as I’ve heard from as far as I remember Valve is a great place to work and by all accounts treat their employees well.

Love seeing Blue Prince win awards. Such an inventive, creative and amazing game.

I was just warning them to set their expectations. It’s a sad state of affairs.

Even 12GB honestly feels low these days. I have a 4070ti that I regret buying because I still run into VRAM bottlenecks and I don’t even play in 4k. I guess if you’re content with 1080p you might get away with it but I’d be super weary about buying anything with only 8GB.

It was literally the only way Alan Wake 2 was getting made, no other publisher would finance the project after Alan Wake 1 sold poorly and Sam Lake/Remedy really wanted to make it.

I mean… as with all Remedy games the writing, tone and style is pretty much the draw. MP3 is a great third-person shooter, but it’s not a great Max Payne.

Unbelievable game for its age, it looks bonkers good for a 2005 release with some really impressive particle effects and particularly distortion effects. Shockwaves from explosions and slow motion bullet traces look phenomenal still and really smooth, clean and sharp.

Gunplay is great and holds its own against most modern releases, with literally every weapon barring the oddly anemic assault rifle feeling amazing to use. The combination of extremely intentional level design and the insane-for-its-time AI makes every fight fun and different.

If you haven’t played it yet it’s regularly sold on GOG for like a dollar and I consider it a must-play. Make sure to grab the Echo Patch and dont forget to play the Extraction Point expansion too, which is included in the GOG edition and is phenomenal - perhaps even better than the base game.

Shame it’s just the original Splinter Cell. I’ve been wanting Chaos Theory on GOG for years. Also would love an actual PC port of the OG Xbox version of Double Agent, but I know that’s dreamland copium. It’s an awesome game and easily the better version but trapped in the Xbox ecosystem.

Disney probably.

I’ve seen some gameplay of it and can’t say it looks great. I expected “clunky Vampire Dishonored” though by now so that part ended up being as expected. A studio who’s only made walking sims before trying their hand at an action game for the first time was always likely to end up shaky.

What’s disappointed me was the writing. I don’t really like any of it, and I’m less into Fabian than most seem to be. Granted I only watched a few hours.

Still, if you love the World of Darkness and enjoy gratuitous power fantasies it might be worth grabbing on sale.

It’s the same as in any art field I think. Inevitable side effect of the internet and modern technology. I listened to a podcast a while back that had one of my favourite small indie bands as guests, and they were discussing how the same thing applies for music. The market is simply way, way oversaturated.

Really? It was such a massive flop and was so entertainingly bad it became an instant meme, and ironically turned into one of the most memorable releases of the year - just for all the wrong reasons.