[Mentalist]

Malankazooie, on 16 November 2021 - 06:40 PM, said:

Well, I guess all that is left is to pop the champagne and celebrate the best games of 2021. BUT there is always a lot of announcements at The Game Awards (Dec. 9th). I wonder what will be revealed?



A lot of Deathloop in the categories up for grabs.

Hoping for Darksiders 4, and a few games from Focus, in terms of mid-sized new reveals.

I'm expecting to see more of either Atomic Heart or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2

Would be really cool to get a re-reveal of Bloodlines 2, but I'm not really holding my breath for that one.

Edit: I foresee a lot of drama due to Returnal not being nominated a lot

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 17 November 2021 - 05:05 AM

[Malankazooie]

I would very much like to see more about Atomic Heart. Also God of War Ragnarök, but I think that is expecting too much.

[Mentalist]

"Thymesia", the Darksiders II-looking souls-like got a delay to 2022 (was supposed to launch Dec 7th).
That was the one game I was really looking forward to in December. A few indie titles are out today that i'm gonna grab; and I'm guessing that'll be it for my major games purchases this year, unless I see some really good sales on stuff.

[Malankazooie]

huh, Far Cry going the same direction as Assassin's Creed and will be a perpetual live service game or something. I still want to see how and what they deliver in that space. Chasing those trends, ya-know.

https://www.gamespot...t/1100-6497943/

Anyway, I only ever played Far Cry 3, because reviews of the titles that followed were pretty much that it was more of the same. Not a bad thing, just not enough to propel me to purchase. I'd like to play of few of them that followed, for sure.

I'm not that keen on the live service pivot. I was okay with the release of a game and then DLC/expansions that follow and then the next release down the road.

[Mentalist]

Days Gone is a flash deal at 50% off on Fanatical
I really don't care for zombie games and fiction as a general rule; is there anything actually special in this game that makes it worth getting?

[Malankazooie]

Mentalist, on 22 November 2021 - 06:07 PM, said:

Days Gone is a flash deal at 50% off on Fanatical
I really don't care for zombie games and fiction as a general rule; is there anything actually special in this game that makes it worth getting?

I grabbed it off the monthly free games for PS+ but have yet to play it. I recall some of the game play that was reveled when it was announced showed some impressive zombie hoard situations, where it looks like it forced you to be more strategic in how you get around, versus just mowing them down with a machine gun. I think there is a progression in things you can craft and eventually acquire that got some positive remarks. I don't know anything about the story itself another then you are a dude-bro type biker.

[Aptorian]

Mentalist, on 22 November 2021 - 06:07 PM, said:

Days Gone is a flash deal at 50% off on Fanatical
I really don't care for zombie games and fiction as a general rule; is there anything actually special in this game that makes it worth getting?

It does some interesting things in terms of character development and voice acting but it's overall a very mediocre open world game.

Only really unique aspect is the zombie hordes that hide in caves, farm buildings, train cars, etc. At certain times of day they emerge and swarm around their territory. They're fairly terrifying when you randomly come across them and suddenly find yourself being rushed by dozens or hundreds of zombies.

There's around 50 of these hordes and even at the end of the game some of the hordes are still intimidating.

[Mentalist]

Yeah, I think I'll save my money for this week's steam sale then.

Hoping F.I.S.T. gets a decent discount, been hearing nothing but good things about it.

[Malankazooie]

Any you guys PS Plus subscribers? I received a second invitation to buy a PlayStation 5 (last one was beginning of last summer if I remember correctly). The next invitation to purchase a PS5 is for tomorrow (which I replied my interest to back in October). Anyway, letting you guys know if you are on PS+ to pay attention to the email correspondence from Sony if you are in the hunt for a PlayStation 5.

[Mentalist]

If anyone feels like spending 70 minutes, here's a pretty decent round-up of upcoming, announced, high-profile mostly next-gen games:



Not an exhaustive list, by any means, (Hellblade 2 and Plague Tale: Requiem feel like obvious omissions), but still pretty decent.

I'm guessing we might get some updates on a few of these next Thur at The Game Awards

[Malankazooie]

If you watch on YouTube, the time stamps for each game are in the description (e.g. click Show More).

[Mentalist]

https://opencritic.c...me/12298/chorus

Decent reception for the game, praising the combat, but everything else is meh.

20% off at Fanatical, and there's a Steam demo, Definitely gonna check this out on the weekend.

[Malankazooie]

It was only a matter of time. Tonight we dine in Hell!

PlayStation Is Reportedly Planning A New Service To Take On Xbox Game Pass

Something to watch develop I suppose and see what they roll out.

[Mentalist]

Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection steam page went up last week. Still sucks that we aren't getting the original trilogy (at least not now).


The Game Awards announcements are starting to drip in:

-Lord of the Rings: Gollum will get a trailer
-Epic Games has a new Unreal Engine 5 tech demo that's all about The Matrix and will be downloadable on next-gen consoles after the show- the creators of Matrix were involved
-"Steelrising", the "fight Louis XIV's automaton army in alt-history French Revolution as Marie Antoinette's robot bodyguard" game by Spiders (the devs behind Technomancer and Greedfall) is getting a new trailer. I absolutely love Spiders, so this is exciting.
-Atlus just added another unknown game to its Steam store listing, so an announcement is likely.

[Malankazooie]

I know it has been received thus far with a resounding 'meh', and I think the general consensus as it stands right now is that the Gollum game is going to stink up the place, but I really want to see what that Mordor walking tour simulator is going to show us. Will we see Gollum's POV looking in on the key events of Frodo, Sam and the nastyeee hobitsesses?

Oh man *drools*, love the concept of French Revolution alt-history. That is right in my sweet spot.

[Mentalist]

Malankazooie, on 06 December 2021 - 07:08 PM, said:

I know it has been received thus far with a resounding 'meh', and I think the general consensus as it stands right now is that the Gollum game is going to stink up the place, but I really want to see what that Mordor walking tour simulator is going to show us. Will we see Gollum's POV looking in on the key events of Frodo, Sam and the nastyeee hobitsesses?

Oh man *drools*, love the concept of French Revolution alt-history. That is right in my sweet spot.

Gollum is a stealth-action game, iirc. It takes place before LOTR, not sure if before the Hobbit, or in between.

What we've seen of Steelrising looks pretty souls-y so far; but Spiders DID initially stress "vertical in level design"- which would make sense for Classicist Parisian architecture, especially with barricades all over. So I'm really hoping this upcoming trailer focuses on that aspect of gameplay, and how you can customize your automaton, rather than combat.

[Mentalist]

The next Sonic game and the movie sequel are both getting trailers tomorrow
Saber said they have a bunch of stuff to reveal this week- some at TGAs, other at their own twitch event.
Saber interactive now has the godfather of Doom, Tim Willits, and they've bought 3D Realms last year with that sweet Embracer cash. So more "boomer shooters" announcements seem likely.

The thing at TGA is in conjunction with Focus- who published Saber's mud/snow/etc runner-big-truck-and-other-big-cars-simulation-games. I'm hoping that's not the only thing Focus Home announces, though, b/c I wanna see some of that glorious AA action game jank that they've been so good with the past few years.

Edit: apparently, Suicide Squad game will also be shown.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 08 December 2021 - 04:48 PM

[Malankazooie]

So, I read that Halo Infinite multiplayer is really solid, except for the universal complaints about the battle pass, progression thing.

But I read the story/campaign knocks it out of the park. Anyone play the story yet? initial thoughts?

[Aptorian]

I was planning on playing Halo last night but the installation process was pretty annoying. I ended up falling asleep before the game was ready to launch.

Hopefully I'll put a couple hours into it tonight.

Heard some conflicting responses to the campaign. On the one hand, the patented Halo combat experience is as good as ever but it sounds like Open World execution is sub par. It's not completely free roam, there's only that one rocky mountains biome, there's not much to experience in the open world. Mostly you'll just be travelling between objectives and clearing out enemy camps Farcry-style.

As long as the game feels like Halo 5 I'll be happy.

[Khellendros]

I also had the super-long installation experience. Eventually managed to play the opening mission at around 11pm. It was good fun, and it's funny how easily I slipped back into the Halo groove after six years of not touching it. The grapple is immediately extremely satisfying. Also great are the enemies - AI seems pretty good, and both the grunts and brutes already feel like they have a large mix of amusing lines which gives the cannon fodder quite a bit of character.

The story is set up very intriguingly - I'd be even more lost if I hadn't played Halo Wars 2, as it seems the antagonists from that are the enemies here (HW 2 ended very suddenly on something like a cliffhanger, and this seems to take place quite a bit of time after that). There are a lot of questions already about what's happened in the 6 months since the opening cut scene, and there are hints that Master Chief knows more than he's revealing (which is weird when you're playing as him, but I like it!)

I'm playing it on an original Xbox One, and boy did it chug and stutter in that first cut scene! Looks and plays good, however - though clearly not as good as it would on the XSX.

This post has been edited by Khellendros: 09 December 2021 - 05:40 PM