Coelacanth

I could barely get through one playthrough of it to be honest. The first 20ish hours were alright but by the end of the 60h playthrough I had to actively force myself to finish it. I agree that the story is competent but nothing special, and the way it’s mono-serious and every line is delivered in the same dour, stoic monotone just wore me down over the playthrough. Plus the quest design is repetitive and pretty dull, as is the open world stuff. And the combat is fine but really not deep or varied enough to fuel such a long playtime.

While the world is gorgeous from a visual design perspective, I didn’t really get the alive sensation at all personally. That is something I felt in RDR2 for sure, but Ghost just felt like a bog standard Ubisoft open world to me.

But I seem to be in a minority feeling this way about Ghost so maybe I’m just getting old and cranky.

I’m with you. I thought it was alright but I never saw what everyone else seemed to see in the game. I do admire it for being both beautiful and immaculately optimised however.

First game I got or first one I bought for my own money? The first game I ever got and played was Super Mario Land for the GameBoy. I remember when the hype around Pokémon Red/Blue coming to Europe was building I was trying to calculate how many weeks of allowance I would need to save up to afford it, so that might have been the first one I actually purchased, I can’t remember for sure if I bought it myself or got it as a gift. Diablo 2 launched a year later and I know I bought that one as I vividly remember the car ride back from the store, so otherwise that might be it.

All of these were of course incredibly worth it. I would never have gotten into video games without that GameBoy and Super Mario Land I think, and Pokémon was a formative experience for me as I got to participate in the whole Pokémania phenomenon. And Diablo 2 is one of the games I have the most hours in over my childhood, it kept resurfacing over my school years as me and the other gamers in my school would randomly get the urge to start playing Diablo 2 again randomly almost yearly over the course of like 8 years after its release.

I have a feeling this will be to Owlcat was BG3 was to Larian.

I never played it but I watched the ChristopherOdd Let’s Play of it and enjoyed it. Fun little game for sure.

Combat looks so-so but the card based abilities sounds cool enough for a wishlist.

• Withering Rooms - 2.5D horror roguelike in a procedurally generated victorian manor. I’ve only heard great things and it looks phenomenal and unique.
• The Drifter - Australian point and click with beautiful pixel art, a supposedly amazing story and some stellar voice acting.
• Death Howl - turn based strategy meets deckbuilder meets Soulslike!? Looks beautiful and interesting.
• Radiolight - Horror walking simulator that looks inspired by Firewatch and Alan Wake. Looks interesting.
• Seance of Blake Manor - Was a huge hit last year, I’m keen to try it. Agatha Christie simulator in a mysterious manor sounds good to me.
• Murders on the Yangtze River - Chinese Ace Attorney but more serious and less silly is what I’ve heard it described as. I’m intrigued.

Same goes for some of the main story writing I’ve seen. Truly uninspired stuff, just absolute blandness.

For me it mostly depends on what the ending of the main story is like, and how invested I was in the narrative. If I was really invested and the game ended in a satisfying way my overwhelming impulse tends to be to immediately uninstall. A kind of “snapping the finished book shut and placing it on the bookshelf” thing that is satisfying in and of itself.

Oh of course not, I was just musing out loud. But I think maybe I just don’t “get it” and am not in the target audience anymore. I think what made me understand what the game is is someone said that it’s just an offline MMO. I think if I was still sixteen or something I might have been into dedicating the next six months to nolifing this game. But these types of games are just not for me anymore. I don’t play any MMOs anymore for a reason.

I’m glad people are enjoying it but it looks both boring and exhausting from what I’ve seen of it. I wonder if the playerbase will remain or if it’s just the hype wave.

Radiolight came out last fall and looks good! But I agree in general that there aren’t as many or frequent releases of them as during that boom.

I should not be buying more games considering the size of my backlog. That being said, I currently am playing and enjoying a copy of Rise of the Ronin acquired courtesy of FitGirl, and so if that one goes on sale for ~€20 again I might buy it because I’d like to own it actually, I wouldn’t mind supporting Team Ninja further and log my playtime on my Steam account.

Also have some other wishlist items I’m itching to pull the trigger on if a deeper sale materialised:

• Withering Rooms
• The Drifter
• Death Howl
• Radiolight
• Seance of Blake Manor
• Murders on the Yangtze River

Bethesda has announced its long-awaited list of updates and additions to Starfield, which fans have been anticipating as the game’s ‘version 2.0’ moment.

Starfield has fans?

I think “Mixed” is where Steam reviews falter, at least for me. If a game is mostly negative it’s usually bad and if it’s very positive or overwhelmingly positive it’s usually good. But I’ve certainly had experiences with several games that are much better than “Mixed” reviews would indicate.

One the one hand F:NV is a broken mess that could seriously use a once-over… but one the other I shudder at the thought of all the mods this might break.

I haven’t seen Rayman Legends mentioned, so I’ll throw it out there. It’s a pretty flawless game for what it tries to be, and it’s a lot of fun to play with a friend. The musical levels are just extraordinarily crafted. Definitely recommended if you’re into platforming at all (and even if you’re not it’s worth a shot!)