Probably most hours I’ve spend where with Conquer Online back in the days before mysteryboxes where introduced. After that probably puzzle and dragons.

Luckily after those games I learned to question my time spent in these games. (Basically just one day after grinding tower of gods for umpteenth time to spend my 1k stamina/energy, I asked myself wtf am I doing with my life, was I having fun?)

After that my most played games have been Grim dawn, Sacred2, Monster hunter world, No Man sky, Incredible adventures of van helsing then various 2d fighters like Blazblue, undernight inbirth and Granblue fantasy versus that I play on locals.

The title is a bit missleading considering that the actual article mentions a lot other problems that plagued the development.

Project 8 faced both progress and challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic made team stability difficult, but some quality improvements were achieved. However, critical issues persisted, causing delays and budget increases. The latest review revealed unresolved problems needing more time and money, along with revised sales forecasts, raising doubts about the project’s profitability.
– TLDR by Microsoft copilot

While there’s still demand for “narrative-driven story-rich games” one should keep realistic expectations. For this genre I feel smaller scope and indie developers work much better.

Some of these could use “Nightdive” treatment like TimeSplitters trilogy.

Simple a PC version of the game with support for latest hardware and operating systems and support for LAN or self hostable multiplayer would give these games new life among people not interested in modern multiplayer games.

Signed this few days a go.

Many games already do this and I would like to give honorary mention to NeocoreGames who have done this to their Van Helsing and most recently with Warhammer Inquisitor. Latter one just recently got offline support with all past seasons playable.

I dont think its unreasonable to require even live services or mmos to have robust end-of-life plan that quarantees customers that the game will remain playable in some form or another.

They likely just have one algorithm that uses seed based on star systems id or location. This way the planets are the same for everyone and they only need to store data based on player interractions like bases and discoveries.

Due to this the changes can’t be applied to just “selected” planets. Separate dimensions might be possible as they already have similar systems in place for expeditions and galaxies. These could however confuse returning players looking for new content.

They’ve probably spend a lot of budget to make the combat in this game this fluid. However as a side effect the game has become even more of an action game with leveling and loot shoveled in than before. I just hope Bioware can pull off at least some level of build diversity with different classes, skills, items and abilities so that there will be at least some depth with character progression.

Gameplay looks fine but also very similar to most triple-A action games on the market. Combat is fluid and cinematic meaning you can probably pull off all sorts of combos by mashing light and heavy attack buttons then do bunch of acrobatic moves to dodge any enemy attacks. You can probably also counter attacks execute all sorts of cool cinematic takedowns with single button or QTE.

But this often means that the combat lacks any sort of meaningful weight, emergent gameplay is non-existent and actual player choice is very limited and thightly controlled by what the game and level designers allow.

The trailer makes my eyes hurt so it’s a definate skip for me.

I mean the whole thing seemed to be animated exclusively with 3s or 4s which to me looks like the characters are micro-warping around instead of moving. When watching In to the Spiderverse and LOVE, DEATH & ROBOTS (SUITS) I literally had to take breaks and watch elsewhere so rest my eyes and this looks a lot worse.

Was about to comment about the developers probably had to meet some diversity quota but the “hero shooter cast” sounds even more descriptive. Personally don’t really mind much if the gameplay is good and the game is free of the usual triple-a monetization shenigans.

But in a post Baldurs gate 3 world Bioware will need to work extra hard to meet the increased expectations.

Looks like more doom which is all right in my book. Now If they can keep out the always online and live service bullshit out of this one and focus on single player it might turn out to be yet another good doom game. Not sure about the dragon and mecha though, I would rather not have any vehicles, mounts and anything like that in Doom games.

The cutscenes hurt my eyes with the frame rate but the gameplay looks alright.

Honestly not fan of the the way some 3d animations animate with 2s/3s to create fake stop motion videos. It’s even worse when they try to make it look like a cartoon/anime and completely forget to add any smear frames that make the these animations look a lot smoother than they actually are. For me these look like characters constantly warping around instead of moving which hurst my eyes, luckily it seems to only affect the characters and not the movement camera.

The gameplay looks alright but very unoriginal, there’s seems to be this basic combat with dodging, light and heavy strikes and then these fly using streams of wind/magic/energy and energy hook-shot to get you exactly where developers want you to go. Maybe the theme, story and visuals will be enough to make this shine above the competition.

Honestly they’ve been on a steady decline in my eyes at least. With each and every new entry they’re becoming more and more like the rest of the Triple-A studios.

Sure many of their games are still decent fun if you can ignore:

• Dark patterns
• Microtransactions in full priced games
• Battle passes
• Denuvo

Personally I just can’t as mere existence of these thigns ruins my trust towards these developers/publishers.

They’re still microtransactions in a full priced game which can break the trust between player and the developers/publishers.
Worst ones are probably the portcrystals and metamorphsis ones which both solve artificial problems created by the developers.

• Full of microtransactions
• Single character slot
• Denuvo
• Performance problems (even on consoles)

Yeah thats an easy pass for now

Maybe some Sacred Gold or Kirby: Forgotten land. Away from my gaming pc so old laptop and switch will have to do.

I wish more players would just ignore these cosmetic microtransactions and go with the default skin or at least limit themselves to ones that can be obtained by actually achieving something in the game. Using default skin while outplaying people in competitive games could probably induce some people to make quite salty comments.

Grim Dawn feels a little mechanically dated at this point but it’s still solid

Honestly Grim dawn is probably the most polished action rpg I’ve ever played. The developers have spend a ton of time adjusting the game mechanics, balance and build variety to be as good as possible. This is quite a contrast to games like path of exile where the developers are costantly adding new mechanics and bunch of new items each season. Sure doing so keeps the game feeling fresh which is important for live service but results in a lot more rough edges.

Actually bought Diablo III: Eternal Collection for PS4 just because it can be played offline and all the content is on the disc. For my understanding both Diablo 4 and Diablo II: Resurrected require internet connection.

MIght still pick them up for a discount to just check them out at some point ignoring most of the live service bullshit stuff like skins and special mounts.

Prismatic bolt embermage is really strong in vanilla and cannon engineer is probably easiest class to play in the whole game. Melee engineer and many other embermage builds can be quite tough and the game has plenty of weird difficulty spikes and enemies with “shotgun” skills that can melt through player health in an instant.

In Torchlight 2 you can reset the world and grind for levels and gear but that can feel like a chore.

It’s ok but many of levels later in the game (especially dlc levels) are just way way way too long. People keep replaying the Soggy Cave and few other levels just because they’re short.

I do like however the variety the game has with weapons, items and skills.