Ugh, I can already tell this is my deadline for my getting a GPU upgrade.

Hopefully the switch to a third-party engine means I won’t have to wait a year after release like I did with CP2077. I imagine this game has to be super important to Epic.

This is in Kovir.

Still the best synthesis of story and gameplay I’ve seen. The game’s phenomenal at attaching you to characters through gameplay (and it tells you early what exactly it’s gonna do with that, too).

The sequel does it too, but in a very different (and very bold) way.

If I’m being honest, before Hades, I wasn’t sure how much of a future Supergiant had in game dev. They clearly have talent for making beautiful looking worlds with great soundtracks and writing, but their gameplay was not exceptional for the genres they dabbled in. They didn’t try to iterate either, flitting from genre to genre.

Hades was the result of them taking what they learned from Bastion and Pyre and applying it to a trend. They really nailed the gameplay this time. I think Hades 2 is even better, and I suspect it will be again be a GOTY contender when it comes out.

That said, I think they could very well end up branching out again from roguelites after this.

Has happened multiple times in Australia.

Very similar to that for films, the rating board process mostly regulates games in development. In the US, for example, the AO rating will prevent your game from being sold at mass market storefronts. When your game has borderline content, it’s a back-and-forth process that’s resolved before release.

Game content rating boards work (ESRB, PEGI, CERO, etc.). The difference here is there’s no pressure from the digital storefronts. They don’t have the same taboos on gambling that brick-and-mortar stores had on sex and violence in video games back when they started up.

Yuri’s original post has since been deleted. Erin Fitzgerald, the (second) voice of Chie, also said on Bluesky that she won’t be returning, along with Amanda Winn Lee, the voice of Yukiko, elsewhere:

I don’t know if Sega or Atlus did something to piss everyone off, if it’s some bizarre marketing stunt, or if the others just decided to pile on after Yuri went scorched earth on this. The whole thing’s pretty weird.

Are you saying that Hashino himself was responsible for the problematic content, or that he would have stood in the way of revising it?

Skyward Sword was a weird one for me. The motion controls drove me nuts almost all the time, except when they didn’t and I was having a blast. Unfortunately, that wasn’t super often, and when I finally did get into a groove, it was the very end of the game. The final boss felt really good. But then it was over.

The third dungeon is also one of my favorites in the series and the story has one of my favorite Zeldas (the character) in the series, too. At the same time, there were also large stretches I hated. So many ups and downs for me.

I started a HG/SS Nuzlocke recently–first time I’ve done one–and ran into the same trouble I always do on hardcore/high-risk runs: as soon as it starts to get easy or too predictable, I completely lose interest.

Miss that era of Pokémon something fierce, though.

Sounds like the solo experience isn’t great. Unless you’re okay with getting matched with randos, I guess you’d better bring exactly three players?

I don’t have it as a masterpiece myself, but Night in the Woods is an excellent exploration of the intersection of the anxieties of young and grown adults in a town setting. The script is tightly written.

I think Astro Bot pokes a hole in that, unless you’re talking about a specific award?

Feels like the GOTY frontrunner at this point, as it seems to have edged out KCD2 in the press. Amazing achievement for a fresh studio.

Death Stranding 2 and Hades 2 (if it comes out this year) are other possibilities.

It’s a recent one, but I haven’t been able to get Gestral Summer Party out of my head since I first heard it in Expedition 33 last month.

Crypt of the NecroDancer is a steal at $3. And it definitely made me feel old seeing it on this list 😭

This one feels like a case of patient gaming backfiring on me. It took me a couple of years to finish Ys IX, but now that I’ve waited on this, I just want to hold out until Proud Nordics comes out.

Price isn’t the only consideration with patient gaming, there are also features and bugs to think about. It’s a good game, but there are lingering issues–softlocks (brutal in a game without manual saves), crashes, and especially sound problems–that I think would warrant patience for some players, especially on PC.

Good scores. I enjoyed the first one but it did feel a little thin. Excited to dive into this at some point!

We don’t own our games anymore, so I need to know my library’s going to stick around if I’m going to invest in it. Last I heard, EGS hasn’t made a profit, so that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in me that it’ll still be around in five years.

I think competition is the answer to a lot of problems consumers face, but unfortunately the “are you going to be there tomorrow?” problem is going to be a major disadvantage for any storefront that competes with Steam. It’s why my most preferred shop is GOG, because I still have all my games with them if they close up.