Okay listen. I know I haven't played it myself but... Isn't Arc Raiders just another fucking extraction shooter? How the fuck does it beat Blue Prince for most innovative gameplay?
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.
It has some really strong moments and a very powerful ending that means it leaves a very strong lasting impression in a lot of people. Also the music really carries it. I still think it's a good game, but I was definitely a victim of this too and have found that my esteem of it has fallen a little bit as the "dust has settled" so to speak.
It's still a great game, and I'd recommend people playing it but I don't think I'd rank it as highly on my all-time list now as I would have when I sat and watched the credits roll the first time.
Definitely grab this one, this was one of my surprise hits last year. Really fun, short, concise and well written tribute to retro RPGs. Great pixel art, fun enough turn based combat, some fun dice rolls in dialogue and a really cool gloomy setting with some cosmic horror undertones. Great music too.
Can't recommend it enough, especially for this price!
The game was made by communists, and they do make fun of themselves and other communists a lot and try to be even handed with the satire. That being said, if you've completed all four political vision quests you do notice how pro-communist the authors are. I always recommend people do the communist path on their first playthrough, because it is the political quest that injects a necessary piece of hope into the game. It feels almost like the "canon" choice considering how well it balances out certain other elements of the story.
Not only do you have some gorgeous lines in the book club about their motivations, like:
"I guess you could say we believe it because it's impossible." He looks at the scattered matchboxes on the ground. "It's our way of saying we refuse to accept that the world has to remain... like this..."
But then the scene also ends with irrefutable proof that infra-materialism works. Ideas can change the world if you believe in them.
Mbin is just kinda weird. I guess there aren't too many people who are after a Reddit-like that also care too much about microblogging. Or maybe they do but the microblogging part of Mbin is just an inferior experience to Bluesky or Mastodon anyway? Or maybe people just dislike having to call shitposts in meme communities "articles" in "magazines"?
Probably the worst of the first four Splinter Cell games (ie: the "good ones"), but still a very solid game with great stealth. Absolutely worth this price.
Hah, pretty much! I actually also forgot it does 20% more damage to abyssal enemies just like Artorias sword does for lore reasons!
It does have some skill ceiling if you want to get really fancy, but it's easier than you think because enemies are input reading and they're not programmed to account for the rapid change in direction of that initial ground lunge. So you quickly get a feel for when to use it to make them miss.
It's not broken though, it's just really good and really fun. It is a UGS so the normal swings are slow, and it's also a kind of an awkward quality weapon with C/A scaling when maxed. And it can't be buffed/infused.
Okay listen. I know I haven't played it myself but... Isn't Arc Raiders just another fucking extraction shooter? How the fuck does it beat Blue Prince for most innovative gameplay?