[Malankazooie]

They continue to put out free DLC content for GTA Online. Which has really been a smart play on their part and kept the interest of gamers and kept the online play (and game) going and going. It's something other developers could take note from *cough cough Bungie *cough cough.

I personally was upset (as other gamers were) , that they never released and expansion/DLC for single player story, but the success of online pretty much made sure that was probably never gonna happen.

[Mentalist]

I keep meaning to get back into GTA 3. My PC at the time it was out was crap, so I basically totally missed out on the 3D city sandbox craze as it happened (I was discovering RPGs and immersion sims, expanding from my "RTS or GTFO" mindset)

Neither 4 nor 5 sound like the kinds of games I'd really be interested in playing, tbh. We'll see in a few years (most likely), when I whittle my backlog down to the city sandboxes.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 11 April 2018 - 08:33 PM

[Malankazooie]

God of War

PS4's 'God of War' Is The Best-Reviewed Game Since 'Breath of the Wild' And 'Super Mario Odyssey'

Any you guys jumping in on release day? (April 20)

[Aptorian]

Yeah it's looking really good.

Here's the Reddit r/games review thread:

https://www.reddit.c..._review_thread/

I got a nice chunk of cash back in taxes this month. I've been looking for a good offer on the PS4 Pro the past couple of weeks but nothing exceptional has popped up yet.

But I think I need to play God of War on release. It's just too cool to miss out on.

[Malankazooie]

Cool. With the 4K television you recently acquired it's gonna be glorious.

About the game. I've read some amazing things they've been able to pull off. The primary being there are no cut scenes or load screens. The action keeps moving. So those little breathers where you can grab that beer to take a sip, might be a little more difficult to manage now. Also, less significantly is there are no quick time events (QTE). Which is a departure for a GoW title.

[acesn8s]

Last month I picked Titanfall 2 and The Last of Us when they were on sale. I've finished the TF2 campaign twice and have been playing a lot of multiplayer the last 2 weeks.

[Malankazooie]

acesn8s, on 13 April 2018 - 11:57 AM, said:

Last month I picked Titanfall 2 and The Last of Us when they were on sale. I've finished the TF2 campaign twice and have been playing a lot of multiplayer the last 2 weeks.

Oh man, lucky! I wish I could play The Last of Us for the first time. Man, those first couple of sequences are some of the best in any video game. You're going to be pulled right in and won't want to come up for air until you've played it to the end. Have fun!

[Aptorian]

I suspect D'rek might be excited about this.

The developer of Overcooked, frantic couch co-op cooking game, are making a similar spaceship management game:

[Mentalist]

Oooh:

http://youtu.be/vNbGbR_2IIQ

An action-RPG set in a DieselPunk space setting. I am intrigued.

The dev is answering questions in the comments to the PCGamer article, seems nice.

[Mentalist]

2 more games I stumbled onto recently that seem like they might to be interesting. Both are in the -"Souls" vein, which isn't telling me much, since I still never played "Dark Souls" (at this rate of backlog-clearing, maybe it'll be another year or 2 before I get to it)

Fade to Silence:
http://store.steampo...ade_to_Silence/

Basically, sounds like "State of Decay" with eldritch monsters instead of zombies, and a "being out in the nature will quickly make you die of cold" mechanic. It's in Early Access, slated for August release, and it's been popping up on YT on a lot of "games to be watch out for" lists lately.

The other one is "Immortal Unchained"

http://store.steampo...rtal_Unchained/

Which is supposed to be a sci-fi Dark Souls with guns.

PC Gamer did a preview of it recently, and the combat was... not great.

https://www.pcgamer....combat-to-work/

Looks fairly pretty though, it'll be interesting to see if the devs can address the criticisms.

[Aptorian]

Valve have acquired Campo Santo, the makers of Firewatch and the upcoming In the Valley of the Gods. You might also know a bunch of the developers from Idle Thumbs.

http://blog.camposan...ampo-santo-news

Quote

Campo Santo News

SAN FRANCISCO–LOS ANGELES–LONDON–SOMEWHERE IN NORTHERN ENGLAND—The twelve of us at Campo Santo have agreed to join Valve, where we will maintain our jobs as video game developers and continue production on our current project, In the Valley of Gods.

If you’re the type of person who gives two flips about this news, we can elaborate a little bit on this big decision. First, we really like making video games. Furthermore, and perhaps more accurately, we really like making and producing entertainment. From the day-to-day production of our last game, Firewatch, to the way we run the company, make merchandise, meet players at expos and shows, send out a quarterly literary journal, throw open-to-the-public game demos in the middle of an artificial forest—all of it is geared towards surprising, delighting, and entertaining the customers who have shared in our success.

In Valve we found a group of folks who, to their core, feel the same way about the work that they do (this, you may be surprised to learn, doesn’t happen every day). In us, they found a group with unique experience and valuable, diverse perspectives. It quickly became an obvious match.

Second, while visiting IGN’s headquarters in early 2015 to talk about Firewatch, we came across an undelivered 2011 Game of the Year Award for Portal 2. It happened to be engraved on an unopened bottle of champagne. Never ones to pass up free alcohol, we stole it and drank it to celebrate the launch of Firewatch a year later. So in some sense, this is a return home for us. Well, for that bottle of champagne.

Third, and last, we had a series of long conversations with the people at Valve and everyone shared the satisfaction we take in working with people whose talents dwarf our own to make things we never thought possible. Both sides spoke about our values and how, when you get right down to it, we, as human beings, are hard-limited by the time we have left when it comes to making the things we care about and believe in. They asked us if we’d all be interested in coming up to Bellevue and doing that there and we said yes.

Yes, we’re still making In the Valley of Gods (as a Valve game!); yes, we’ll still support Firewatch; and yes, we’ll still produce The Quarterly Review and our regular blog content. Thanks so much for your interest in our games and we’ll see you in Washington. Cheers.

—Campo Santo

This is pretty exciting to me.

Valve recently announced that they had done a 180 on their approach to games and were now ready to develop software again, IE making new games.

Now, maybe Valve just likes Campo Santo's style and want to turn their first person narrative driven games into Vive exclusive VR Titles buuut if you wanted to speculate, Valve have been bleeding core development talent. Most notably perhaps, Mark Laidlaw, the writer for Half-life left the company. And Campo Santo does great video game writing, famously two of their team were behind very well received first season of Tell Tale's Walking Dead game.

Maybe Valve aren't willing or ready to start work on Half-life but a new Portal or Left for Dead or maybe just something completely new would be very exciting.

And of course, if you want to talk about working for a game company that doesn't just have the money but also the freedom to be creative, then Valve is probably a dream work place - Provided you can get something done in their weird corporate structure.

This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 22 April 2018 - 05:08 PM

[Mentalist]

Frostpunk is out tomorrow. So is BattleTech, I think.

I'm tempted to pick up Frostpunk now, as the reviews seem good. "This war of mine" is also still on sale, so I can get both for about 40 bucks on GOG

Last city-builder I really dabbled with was Caesar 3, so this is pretty different, but I like the type of ideas these devs are working with, and reviews are sounding pretty positive.

Edit: yeah, I done did the clicking. Let a good dev have some money for whenever I feel like playing a pensive game to remind me of the bleakness of existence.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 23 April 2018 - 08:59 PM

[Mentalist]

BattleTech getting loads of positive buzz. It's a tad too pricey for me atm, though (also, I feel I'd want to be re-reading the BattleTech novels when I'm playing this, and I'll wait for a good kindle sale for that).

Also, Obsidian announced there'll be at least 3 DLCs for PoE II in a "season pass" model, which makes it an easy decision for me to wait for a "Complete Edition" . I enjoyed Pillars of Eternity, but STILL haven't gone back to play "The White March" expansion, and I'm not gonna be repeating the same mistake with PoE II

[Maark Abbott]

Tried Mankind Divided as it was free with PS4. Holy shit, what have they done since HR? It handles incredibly badly, the stealth was naff and the gunplay was absolutely diabolical.

[Mentalist]

Maark Abbott, on 25 April 2018 - 07:18 AM, said:

Tried Mankind Divided as it was free with PS4. Holy shit, what have they done since HR? It handles incredibly badly, the stealth was naff and the gunplay was absolutely diabolical.

Odd. Can't say I noticed any issues in the PC version

[Khellendros]

I'm currently playing Darkest Dungeon, which is great and brutal, and brutally great; and Sea of Thieves, for which I agree that all the criticisms are entirely valid, yet I really enjoy it nonetheless. But then I also really enjoyed No Man's Sky when that first came out too. I've mostly been playing solo, which doesn't create the same organic fun as group play, and it does mean I try to avoid all encounters with other ships. I think it has made me a much better sailor though!

I also got up to the final mission of Horizon: Zero Dawn but then stopped playing because of SoT. Really need to get back to that and finish it off, I thought it was a fantastic game.


Finally, my friends and I at last got our second victory in PUBG. That takes our win percentage up to the heady heights of 1.06%. Our first victory we didn't know what the hell we were doing, and only won because we had a bit more health than the other guy when the zone entirely closed upon us. This time round, me and my surviving friend took down a full 4-man squad at the end to win it - so that felt pretty good. Overall, I've still never hated a game more than PUBG which I nevertheless continue to play. It looks terrible, the gunplay is terrible, it will never be a game I am good at, most rounds are 20 minutes of pointless inactivity...and yet I still play.

[Maark Abbott]

Mentalist, on 25 April 2018 - 11:29 AM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 25 April 2018 - 07:18 AM, said:

Tried Mankind Divided as it was free with PS4. Holy shit, what have they done since HR? It handles incredibly badly, the stealth was naff and the gunplay was absolutely diabolical.

Odd. Can't say I noticed any issues in the PC version

It's put me off trying and this was just the tutorial segment. Just a horrible experience in all.

[Mentalist]

So, RPS bucked the trend that found "BattleTech" to be generally awesome and published aReview highlighting that while the core ideas underlying it's combat are solid and interesting piece of TBS, the execution and extra animations make the presentation feel tedious and excruciatingly boring.

This led to a predictable shitstorm of comments.

The reviewer then Clarified his position, leading to more comments.

Reading them (including commentary from our own Wert) has been enlightening. The game is an unapologetic, SLOW timesink. One player pointed out that after playing for 12 hours, he defeated a total of 50 enemy mechs. So even if I assume most of the fights were even 4 on 4, that's basically 40min-hour for each battle (I'm assuming there'd be at least 10-20 min spent on the meta-game between battles)

This made it a very easy decision to delay purchasing and playing this until something like next winter, when I have a lot more free time to spend indoors.

A rare case when internet drama of can be informative.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 26 April 2018 - 02:08 PM

[Mentalist]

Shadow of the Tomb Raider was demoed to the gaming press and I'm reading lukewarm reception from both PC Gamer and RPS- the sequence that was demoed is mostly linear set-pieces one step away from QTEs. The actual game is supposed to include a very non-linear jungle, but none of that was shown (yet)

I really need to play that first reboot...

[Aptorian]

Trailer for Shadow of the Tomb Raider went up earlier as well:

http://youtu.be/XYtyeqVQnRI

I don't mind the criticism I've heard. I love all the scripted sequences and QTE's. And I don't really care about the mass murder. I've liked the tellng of Lara secretly growing to love the fight, the death and carnage. It's a darker side to the character that gives her more dimensions.

EDIT: What is up with the media function on this site? Youtube videos wont embed recently.

This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 27 April 2018 - 04:28 PM