m76

Mass Effect: Andromeda To say it's underrated is the understatement of the decade, sure it had some issues at launch, but those weren't nearly as big as they were painted as by the youtubers. I should know I played the game at launch. Mercenaries II: World in flames The perfect sandbox game, everyone should learn from this, Ghost Recon Wildlands is kind of similar but still falls short in many aspects. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare A game that's only sin is literally "that's not what we wanted" It's the worst recieved COD game, but it's also the best as far as the campaign goes. DeusEx: Invisible War Most hated the sequel to DeusEx but I think it was a great game, and it offered the choice of male/female protagonist long before it become popularized by mass effect. Sure it was disappointing in some areas, but there were some brilliant touches in it. Like how it resolved the ending of the first game, how it incorporated ideas from the cyberpunk genre. Alpha Protocol Sure the game has issues, but it's also brilliant, some aspects of it need to be incoroprated into other games. Like the relationship system, the freedom of choice it offers to players. It's level of immersion is far beyond any other game I've seen. THe game is not perfect and has some very big flaws, but everyone must experience it at least once. It should be mandatory. Far Cry The original game that launched Crytek to Crysis fame. But the original is often overlooked and dismissed, imo it is by far the superior experience. And it was much more jaw dropping when it came out than crysis was. Alien Isolation This game didn't garner much media or player attention, probably thanks to the abomination that was put out by magic pitchfork &co. It's the finest horror game of the generation, and I say that as someone who is not a fan of horror games. If you never played it, and care for shitting your pants treat yourself. This game literally kept me up at nights. I had to play it in the mornings in short 1-2 hour sessions if I wanted to sleep. Dragon Age II Everybody says EA ruined dragon age in this, but I never felt that was the case. In fact I liked it more than Origins. It had issues like re-using maps, but Mass Effect gets a pass on that, so why shouldn't this also? I liked the more grounded story and how you work to build your reputation back in it. Instead of being already established. That's all I can think of now.

Au contraire, I think it was saved. AC doesn't even need the animus anymore it should just be an anthology of period pieces from various parts of history, a'la the total war series.

Exactly, someone gets it. It presents a plausible situation, and lets the audience pass judgement on it. It's kind of a precursor to the whole theme of the game. First it's Seth who is presented as a jerk, and the next morning it is Ellie who is presented as being a jerk.

The difference between XCOM Chimera squad and The Last of Us II, is that every scene in the Last of us II is plausible. I could easily see the dance scene play out exactly like this in reality in some backwater town fair. Yes the bigot sandwitches part was out there, and that is the only line in the game I don't approve of. But that's only the writing, the context is still valid, Ellie being upset with the guy is perfectly plausible. And I do think Elllie being a jerk at that point makes sense in context. So I'm sorry I cannot view it as a direct political statement. You still seem to miss the difference between presenting a string of events as they play out, without commenting on them, and direct statements out of nowhere, and out of context. Lev's story arc doesn't make any statements. I don't remember any parts where they use it as a flare. In fact it is so subtle, that on my first playthrough I swear I completely missed that he was supposed to be trans. I just assumed the seraphites were giving boys as "wives" to their elders. As we saw real churches doing something similar. Only in my second viewing did I catch the part about being called Lily before. Oh and one more thing, the story could play out exactly the same way if we replace Lev with Lily, or Lily with Lev. So it's not a defining trait of the character, just happens to be part of his backstory. That's how you write an LGBTQ character well.

the most recent example of this that comes immediately into my mind: XCOM:Chimera Squad, where literally all characters are used to randomly utter current day sociopolitical statements, without regard to how much sense it makes. The most blatant being, when the Muton (if you are not familiar with the game they are brutish tank-like creatures specifically bred for fighting) randomly proclaims that human females are stronger warriors than human males. I mean not only is it a stupid generalization, but it makes zero sense coming from this character. I'm all for female empowerment, so I do believe that some females are/ can be sronger warriors than men, but this is not the way to make that widely accepted. If anything statements like these I think are specifically made to piss some people off. If you want the "morons" to come around this is not the way. This is where we have to disagree. I think it does make things worse, or outright bad when there are out of context references in them, trying desperately to convey the writer's ideology instead of crafting a convincing character. For example The Mass Effect Uprising novel, was so bad due to this that I Couldn't read it all the way through. The main character was constantly obsessing over the race of her cohorts, and the book desperately tried to convey the message that feelings trump logic and reason. It made the book unconsumable trash. It is clearly the ideology of the writer, and not the character. Because it doesn't make sense in the context. Or a hollywood example can be: Star Trek Discovery, and Michael Burnham. Where again the way the character acts doesn't make any sense in the setting. The selfishness, self-centeredness and pettiness would have explelled her from starfleet long before becoming an officer. As my first example shows I agree with the sentiment, and I still don't want it presented to me the way they are doing it. So I stand by my statement that political messaging shouldn't be in entertainment products. There is no hypocrisy there on my part. But I do agree that there are a lot of hypocrites in the anti.sjw camp who only call out messaging if they disagree with it. And are perfectly happy with messages they agree with.

I'm not blaming the developers at all. I'm blaming the fans who read more into it than they possibly should. And through that setting it up as a potential disappointment in face of unrealistic expectations.

We need more games where you can effectively solve problems without violence. I feel like adventure games are too one sided, they are basically just a big slaughter house these days. Did anyone count how many kills you get in the average action adventure game by the time you finish it? It must be in the thousands. I'd say killing has already become normalized. There were so many games in the 90s, where killing wasn't an integral part of the game. Now every AAA game is a copy of a copy of a copy of the same tired formula. Horror games aren't defined by the amount of gore, they are defined by the tone, the setting and the setpieces. And often by stupid predictable jump scares. Showing gore won't turn any game into a horror automatically. Why do you need nudity in a videogame? A nice outfit is much more appealing to me than plain nudity. It's crude and pointless. Most of the time showing less is much more intriguing that full frontal nudity. Now I'm not a fan of the recent movement among some hypocritical developers to "de-sexualize" and uglify women in games, while they sexualize men. But I don't get the appeal of straight up nudity either.

I've made similar playable demos before, and that doesn't mean the development is very advanced. It's hard to convey in words, but this demo has that same rudimentary feel to it. Without any of the backend that goes into a complex game. I might be wrong of course it's hard to definitely tell how far the development is based on a video. But that's the vibe I got off of it.

I looked for it in the gaming section not in news.

I'm surprised there is no topic for this game yet. As the entire internet was up in buzz about it for a few weeks. If you somehow missed it, here is the trailer: I have to say I'm not as impressed as others about this. I seems like a generic take on hack and slash genre, and I'm not familiar with the myth it's based on so it can't earn points for that. What really bugged me about the trailer is that if the character can turn into a bug at will, then why would you ever want to fight anyone? You could just fly past every encounter. Also as someone familiar with software development I can't help but notice that there isn't much going on in this trailer. It seems to me that this is a tech demo, not a fleshed out game yet, What do you think, does it deserve all the hype it gets?

I think a large group is not paying for them. I think 10% of players buy 90% of microtransactions, or some similar ratio.

Violence for it's own sake is not appealing at all. What's appealing to me in games is the narrative, and the overcoming of evil. Violence is just a means to get there, not the end itself. What I find curious is that people often confuse violence with gore. And age ratings go the same way. Like it's the gore that is the problem and not the violence itself. I think killing is killing, whether the game shows blood and gore or not. Actually I Think the downplaying and removal of gore is more dangerous, as it trivializes the consequences of violence. A gory game might shock a kid, which is good, violence should be shocking. On the other hand games that removes gore and makes your kills evaporate are normalizing violence. Killing should be depicted in games with the full gory consequences, or not at all.

Games I don't like that everybody likes? All multiplayer only games of course. I feel every multi oriented game is taking away resources that could've been used to craft proper single player immersive experiences. Specific games that I don't like: NFS: Underground - I think this game marked the beginning of the downfall of the series from being a game about dream cars and dream drives, to becoming a cheap neon light infused fast and furious imitator The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - I think the main character is just unbearable, and the storytelling is uninteresting, the quests are tedious, the combat awful, that I'd rather avoid in the game than welcome. In a good game I welcome and enjoy every encounter, here I dreaded them. Read dead Redemption 2 - It's a beautifully crafted game with insane amount of attention to detail, that fails to evoke any interest in me to keep playing it. The only thing that stayed with me is long ass boring horse rides between POIs. I didn't care about any of the characters, or the situations I was forced in by the narrative The choices the main character makes don't align with what I'd do. And there is little to no player choice. Sniper Ghost Warror 3 - TLDR: The worst game I ever purchased. You can read my review of it for details. Assassin's Creed: Origins - Sure, I made the mistake of going into this game after Odyssey, but after Kassandra, Bayek is as interesting as a plank of wood. Far Cry 5 - This game has no reason to exist, it's basically a first person version of ghost recon Wildlands, except it's smaller and worse in every aspect. Coupled with the most dreadful narrative. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus - This game is just a distasteful glorification of violence, it's awful, tasteless, and repetitive. A precursor to new blood, which is even worse, thankfully I avoided that. Ace Combat 7 An arcade flying game that doesn't support flight sticks, except for a few expensive hotas controllers. An unforgivable failure imo. I'm not going to buy a controller to play one game. C&C Remastered Collection - OK this is not about the games, I loved the originals 25 years ago. This is about how they handled the remake and what an awful cashgrab it is. They didn't even fix bugs that were in the games originally and well known. And the cinematics remastering consisted of upscaling the awful overcompressed footage directly from the old games. This remake in my estimation cost no more than $200.000 to make, and they charged $20 for it, and sold like hot cakes as people were eating it up. Which makes me even madder that they could get away with it.

What I find fascinating are the people who cannot differentiate between making political statements and presenting a political theme in a work of fiction. What I have a problem with are direct political statements, when the writers use the fictional characters as their personal mouthpieces. When it is clear as day that the goal was not to write a convincing character, but to send a certain message regardless of how much sense it makes in the fictional setting of the game. There is no problem with being inspired, the problem starts when the game doesn't just presents something, but also tells you what you should think about it. It's annoying, and condescending. You don't need to tell players that killing is bad, we already know it, and those who don't won't be magically reformed by you telling them it's bad. Of course killing is just a crude example, it could be any issue. There are no LGBTQ themes in The Last of Us II, I'm sorry, but if you cannot see that, you are no better than the people you are criticizing, because you think of LGBTQ inclusion as if it's automatically political. Both of you view them as political puppets at that point. The inclusion of a gay couple, is not political. TLOU2 never makes a fuss about the included characters LGBTQ status, it's all seamless and natural. Like it should be. LGBTQ people are not defined by their LGBTQ status. You can't just lump them together, like that is all you need to describe them as individuals. If the game had made any mention of BLM it would not make sense, because it doesn't exist in the game world, so of course I'd not approve of it. But if it existed in that universe, mentioning it wouldn't be an issue, unless they automatically pass judgement on it as well. I don't approve of any political message. If there was conservative messaging in a game it would just as bad, or worse than the currently common far left rhetoric. I know that the left automatically labels alt-right anyone who doesn't fully agree with them, but that doesn't make it true. I'm not even from the US, I think Zrump and his cabinet are scientifically illiterate fools, who govern on nothing but populism, but in any far left circle I'd be immediately labelled as alt-right if not a nazi. But then again I think politics as a whole is a waste of time. Putting labels on things doesn't solve anything. Issues are not political.There are human issues and technical issues, nothing else matters.

You think I didn't notice? At least I don't have to spend much on games.

That's because Wolfenstein is not an actual historical document. The developers are far left anti conservatives, they don't present wwii nazism even remotely faithfully. I suspect they meant to caricature current conservatives more than they wanted to represent actual WWII nazis.

First and foremost, any game that is multiplayer oriented and has no narrative driven single player campaign (except for driving sims) Non-customizable player character will usually keep me away from RPGs, or at least give me reason to suspect I won't like the game. Bullet sponge enemies are an immediate deal breaker Games that are advertised as a "live service" Excessive hype for a game that seems unjustified, for example Ghost of Tsushima, or that in-development Wukong game. When this kind of adulation happens I take two steps back and become very suspicious. Terrible driving physics in any game that involves much driving When the game tries to incorporate current day political messaging. Games are escapism, I play them to get my mind off of day to day issues, not to be reminded of them. There is twitter if you want to be a couch politician, no need to bring it into games. Taking sides: When a game doesn't just present events, but immediately passes judgement on them No anchor in reality. I need at least basic laws of physics to apply even in fantasy games.

You know how many microtransactions and lootboxes isn't too much? 0, zilch, nada, zero.

Only one, but it's wide. Very wide. 38" 3840x1600. It's the best both for games and productivity.

It was one of the greatest games, if not the best tps game of this generation. It might have had the same basic gameplay as the first, but it was polished to absolute perfection. The animations, the fluidity of the combat, the gunplay are all as close to perfect as it gets. I played TLOU:Remaster just before TLOU2 came out, and the gameplay in that is still frustrating and awful comparatively. TLOU2 was a breeze, I loved almost every second of it. The story has some weak points that could be improved in my opinion. But I was satisfied with the overall narrative arc. And the game did everything I wished for. I was secretly hoping Abby would be a playable character since the trailer 2 years ago where she was revealed as a then unnamed character. And long behold I got exactly that. I wasn't sure of it until I got to control her in Jackson. Most rewarding 25 hours I spent on a game.

It depends on how good the game is. Great games can keep me playing all day long without getting bored. If I have no desire to continue playing a game after 1-2 hours that's a failure on the part of the game.

The original Mafia is one of my top5 games of all times. Yet, I have massive reservations about this remake. Some of the narrative changes and character voice/appearance changes makes me nervous. For example Paulie looks and acts nothing like Paulie. He was the cool guy in Mafia, now he comes across as a whiny coward. Plus my favorite part of Mafia was the physics, especially when driving with a proper force feedback wheel. I doubt this will even support driving with a wheel, let alone manual clutch pedal, like the original did. And I expect the physics to be massively dumbed down. And there is no word on whether freeride and freeride extreme will be included in the game.

Young man's reality, What is that? Again, I don't get why young men should be ashamed of being attracted to hot women. You do realize that this was the period when Sliders, Buffy, Cleopatra 2525 and tons of similar shows were on the air? First Wave had an actual porn star in it's main cast. And you dare say there were no attractive women on TV so your fictional geeks had to satisfy themselves with pixel tits? Couldn't be further from the truth. I don't know why this revisionist narrative was created, but Tomb Raider was a success because it was challenging and fun, much more challenging than most games at the time. It was a completely new experience, and not because of the female protagonist. There were games before that had female player characters. From your tone it seems that you think sex appeal is something to be shunned. Why? An opinion by definition cannot be wrong. As it represents a person's views on a topic. The only way an opinion can be wrong, if it's a lie and doesn't actually represent their true opinion. IE: Pretend for virtue points or other reasons. But I stand by mine. The old lara croft is much more plausible. Because I don't go by superficialities like tit size. An uncertain and skittish girl suddenly overcoming every obstacle much greater ones than the original ever had to deal with is not plausible. Not to mention that the old tomb raider games were actually about exploration and the enemy was the environment for the most part. While new lara is like rambo, killing people in the dozens. This world has gone insane, murder and violence is accepted like the norm, but sexual attraction is something that should be repressed and downplayed.

I completely disagree. The NEW Lara is written like the girl next door, "what am I Doing here, oh I'm clumsy", but then does ten times more insane things than the original ever did. There is no amount of suspension of disbelief that can make her work as a plausible character. The old one was educated and physically able and proud of it, what the heck is wrong with that? The new is more of a mary sue, because her abilities constantly get downplayed but still achieves unbelievable things. It's just not realistic. And you honestly think anyone got horny for this? Besides why do you act as if sexuality is a bad thing that should be eradicated?

Train Simulator I spent close to $1000 on it for updates and DLCs betweem 2012 and 2016. I haven't really played it since 2017.