Since the dream of a true sequel is dead, getting Mitsoda et al involved in a proper remake would be the next dream. Imagine the setting and locations with modern ray traced lighting and having Mitsoda rewrite the weak second half of the game into something better?

The gameplay is janky at best and pretty bad at worst - partly because they really went for including all facets of the tabletop and maybe bit off more than they could chew: they wanted FPS gun shooting, third person melee combat, stealth with takedowns and a magic system. As such all those are fairly clunky and unpolished as a result.

Baldurs Gate is weird combat wise with its Real Time With Pause system and you really kind of have to like that slower tactical aspect to get into those games. Bloodlines is still action combat - though not exactly smooth.

Picking Tremere and relying on blood magic to get through combat might be the best bet if you’re unwilling to engage in the unbelievably clunky melee.

If all this talk of Bloodlines and Bloodlines 2 is inspiring you to go try out the original, please remember to install the unofficial patch. Seriously. You’re more or less incapable of finishing the game otherwise due to multiple potential hard locking bugs. Plus it fixes a ton of other minor stuff.

The game itself is great though and worth your time. It devolves a bit in the second half as you get into the parts that were thrown together by the rushed production, but the writing, OST and atmosphere alone are worth experiencing.

Back in like middle school or whatever it was around that time we had a portable drive (or was it just on a CD?) with an installed folder of UT99 we used to bring to school. During recess we’d go and copy paste it to the PCs in the computer room and play little LAN tournaments until a teacher would find us and chase us out. Instagib only or course, and I think we also played 120% speed.

Good times indeed.

Is anyone surprised? I mean, its Monaco. Hate it all you want, it belongs on the calendar. And I completely agree, Monaco qualy is one of the season highlights for me, every year.

Pinging @BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world - probably of interest to you?

The Hindus were right all along, this is the Kali Yuga.

Damn, I did not expect such a step-up from the 7800X3D, that’s kinda insane actually.

Sync. But it’s working now, confusingly.

Your link isn’t working for me but I see now that you already linked this community. Totally my bad, I apologise!

It’s a super useful place for finding new communities to subscribe to! I also heartily recommend !communities@ponder.cat

It’s also surprisingly atmospheric (and just a little bit tense) for a game with rudimentary LCD-style visuals, virtually zero animation, and minimal sound.

Have they… not played a Lucas Pope game before? How is it surprising at all? Obra Dinn already showed what he can do with 1-bit graphics and almost zero animation.

The amount of April fucking 1st videos that would now be indistinguishable from normal videos alone makes the idea of upload date removal outright dangerous in my opinion.

After my rather disappointing adventure with Metro: Last Light recently I ticked off another backlog game in the way of a third-of-a-trilogy I’m really looking forward to this week with Bioshock 2. I adored the first game back when I played it, and I’ve been really looking forward to Infinite, with 2 being a kind of red-headed stepchild in the way.

Overall I enjoyed it and found it alright. The novelty of playing as a Big Daddy wore off pretty quick, and after that it was kind of just “more Bioshock” - which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The setting was still fantastic, and using the Nvidia RTX HDR feature the game looked stunning. The voice acting was great and the shooter gameplay felt as tight and entertaining as the first game. Lots of plasmids that kind of sucked in the first game were surprisingly great here which was fun. I did kind of miss the hacking mechanic from the first game, though.

While I liked the story, it doesn’t really hold a candle to the first game in my opinion, but that is more of an effusive praise of Bioshock 1 than an indictment of Bioshock 2. It served its purpose and wasn’t in the way of me enjoying the game, though it’s not something I’ll think back on time and time again and heartily recommend like the first game, I think.

Finally - and most sadly - the game suffers extremely from instability. I even played the Remastered version, but crashes were frequent, sudden and unpredictable and from looking around online this is apparently a common problem. I tried all the various fixes online but only managed to slightly reduce their frequency. Very unfortunate.

Still, I’m glad to have played it and am looking forward to Infinite sometime in the future.

Wait YouTube is disabling upload date and view counter?

It’s such a great example of art direction versus graphics, honestly. Watching Skill Up’s review I’d often go “oh hey, that lighting looks pretty good, those textures look nice” etc but thanks to the Pixarified people it still looks like shit whenever a person is on screen. I don’t know why but the character designs make me think of cheap mobile games.

Yes, this is exactly why it’s so important to not leave things unchallenged! Human brains are so susceptible to absorbing ideas through osmosis by just reading statements while scrolling.

… my mind

Presumably

I’m in this picture and I hate it here.

Neat, sounds useful!