Withywarlock

I'm going to say Rayman. The controls are good, and Rayman is fully equipped to deal with the threats he faces, but the game still does an excellent job of challenging me in many ways to the point of fury and inevitably giving up. It's a shame I struggle with the game so much because I adore its art, animation and musical style, and can now only experience it via YouTube.

It seems as though Blizzard are running out of cash if they have to resort to such a safe remaster so soon after the Warcraft III: Reforged debacle, which they somehow managed to muck up. This combined with other crowdpleasing announcements at BlizzConline is quite consistent with other times they've had subscription drops and low reception. This is still good news, I guess, though as I check my Battle.net launcher now I see the original game isn't for sale, just like Starcraft and Warcraft III. Let's hope there's a toggle for the original game and the new like Halo: The Master Chief Collection. On the plus side, in checking my Bnet launcher I also came across the Blizzard Arcade Collection which features Blackthorne, who is objectively the coolest character to ever grace a video game. The downside is, because this is Blizzard after all, is that it's part of the 30th Anniversary pack, beginning at £16.79 with the equivilent of pre-order tat. Still, it's better value than it was two days ago.

That's unfortunate because they need better direction, not funding, to make games that can push beyond decent. Independence isn't going to change that, unless the 'threat' of being brought under Electronic Arts' wing properly is enough for Codemasters to get their act together. At least EA's in talks about handling the Formula 1 license. I won't like the monetisation, but at least the game will stand a chance in the multiplayer arena now.

I've heard good things about them from their users, but I personally wouldn't use them. For one thing if I wanted precision I'd just use a mouse, which is always going to be better with practice. But the other problem is those look awful for your thumb tendons, which are already being strained by the Dual Shock controller, and I'm not sure if that's the case with the Xbox controllers either. Your thumbs are meant to go in, not out, and the threat of lifelong arthritis is never worth a sweaty session of vidya. I suppose for $10 they're worth demo'ing, but I would strongly recommend against using them for the usual length of your gaming sessions without frequent breaks.

Lords of the Fallen is a game I'd recommend for that, with a quick read of my write-up on how I trivialised the game with a certain build. You won't be able to play it fast, but you'll live to the end and then some. Plus its story is clearer and detailed than that of Dark Souls, even if there is a lot to like about the Souls worldbuilding. I'd recommend sticking at DS though, and don't be ashamed to look up beginner guides or learning how to summon. The second game is great for that. ^^

I'm not surprised given how high they price their so-called AA entries, how little their prices permanently drop, and how frequent their sales are. Their praise of Game Pass comes off as a gasp of air after drowning in their own corporate structure. Still, good on them for putting their games on a platform where people can pay the amount Team Sonic Racing deserves.

I can only provide anecdotal experiences, but the reason why it took me so long to get into PC was my late 90s experiences. My family's first PC wasn't built for gaming, and it was hard to know if it was or not because knowing a computer's specifications then was a lot harder than it is today. Stores like PC World didn't provide much information on computer specs, and you couldn't look these things up on the internet as easily as you can now because it wasn't as readily available, fast or as extensive as it is today. Peripherals were a lawless free-for-all, where Madcatz had clawed their way to the top as being the best brand that was compatible with most machines. Controllers and joysticks weren't like the Xbox One and Dual Shock controllers that get detected, installed and are usable in most games right away. This goes for games too - if something went wrong, there was little in the way of troubleshooting. If beefy manuals and hotlines didn't help you'd have to get a refund because you weren't going to find this stuff out yourself without knowing someone else who does, or taking classes to learn how. You can forget DirectX and patches, as games infrastructure was mostly local; LAN parties were your multiplayer games, dialling up a BBS was your patching, and God help you if you lost your cardboard copy-protection discs. My apologies for the wall of text, I like waxing nostalgic on this subject even if it does drudge up a lot of bad things about the era. Virtually all of the problems I describe above are long gone, quickly remedied come the advent of Steam and streamlining. With all of that said, none of these problems existed on consoles at the time, making them a much more attractive choice while PC spent over a decade catching up in terms of being more attractive for gaming. Consoles had their own problems such as short but difficult games, maintenance of physical media (blowing on the discs, scratching) and the used market, but they didn't compare to the inability to play certain games on PC. This is my answer to why PC was unpopular rather than currently is. PC gaming is measurably easier to get into today when willpower is taken out of the equation, which varies from person to person, and consoles have a - if only slightly - greater number of steps one must take from booting up the system for the first time and playing a game (firmware updates, account management, home screens). Both are guilty of adding to and subtracting from the "Plug in and play" ideal, and have their own pros and cons when it comes to which is better for which user. ^^

I like a very specific style. Mostly investigative or psychological, where one has to figure out why the atmosphere is as dark and dreary as it is. For instance, Amnesia: The Dark Descent or Call of Cthulu (2019). However, I've also enjoyed games such as Blood with an action-based gothic setting, and World of Warcraft has had its moments with the undead and daemons.

Allow me, if you will, to harp on Dark Souls once more. The first game gives you a full breakdown of the controls as you navigate the Undead Asylum before you're able to beat the Asylum Demon. Your first encounter with the demon will kill you if you try, but only on the second encounter where you perform a falling thrust attack upon them do you realise how killable the creature is. It's then, with newfound vigour, you fight the monster while teaching you not to be cocky with your own health. In Dark Souls 3, the tutorial is similar: kill basic mobs and fight a boss that tries to pull the wool over your eyes, but is deceptively easy when you know how. No muss, no fuss, just get it done. These games have ponderous cutscenes that leave you in the dark the first time you play them, but waste no time past this point at laying down the law.

A blessing in disguise, ADHD has me get up frequently because my attention span isn't very long and I potter about the house if I've nothing urgent to address. So I walk around whether I'm particularly conscious of it or not. I also try to get as much exercise as I can, but living in an urban environment that's quite busy even in pandemic time makes things more difficult than the rural areas I've lived in previously. I try to use painkillers as little as possible for fear of building a tolerance, however minor the risk. So long as there's organic alternatives to treat it, I'll use those first and foremost. Still, prevention is better than the cure where possible. ^^

I regret I can't find it, but it was a green Halo t-shirt with the Master Chief's helmet on the front with crossed shotguns behind it. I recall buying it from an ASDA (UK's Walmart), and getting a good few years of wear out of it during my green phase. The last gaming shirt I received was from Blizzard Entertainment; for an anniversary they'd sent me a Burning Crusade poster and t-shirt that didn't fit, a freebie for my time as an MVP of their European forums. The budget for such things eventually shrank into nothingness, where the most they can expect now is infrequent Christmas cards (very well drawn ones, too) and guaranteed beta access.

Imagine getting 360 no-scoped by a pig. It's happening.

Whether I mind or not doesn't matter because it's the dev's story, but whether it feels like it fits the greater story does. If a character does something against their nature without establishing that they're on the breaking point, in desperate circumstances, etc., then I'll call it out. If desperate times call for desperate measures, said desperate times must be made clear and the character's thought process within their established personality and means.

I was doing a Crash Bandicoot Let's Play some years ago and I'd saved up about ~40 lives, which is almost enough to do Slippery Climb. I saved and quit, letting that video render and be uploaded to YouTube. I return and find the lives have gone. The game doesn't save lives beyond the default number, which is 4. So I then had to do Slippery Climb, which I succeeded in doing after a few game overs, and quit after that part was uploaded. I'm not sure how many games of the Playstation One/Nintendo 64 generation did this, but they're that amount too many.

I'd like to point out immediately that any games here will automatically be spoiled by virtue of mention, and there's one game on this list I don't recommend you look personally look at because I know you've currently got an interest in this series. The first game is Spec Ops: The Line, with its inconsistent 'no heroes' narrative. What was supposed to be an ordinary recon mission in an ordinary third person cover shooter turns out to be much more complicated when orders are ignored and communication breaks down. You're sometimes paused by the game to resolve moral dilemmas such as choosing between two criminals to execute because your soldiers' lives are on the line, or dispersing a crowd. And sometimes you're given no choice. See the infamous white phospherous mission. It's essentially misery porn, and not particularly good misery porn when compared to Heart of Darkness and The Congo Diaries and its inspirations. Another is Mass Effect 3. Between the three endings of control, destroy and assimilate, only two of these can begin to be considered good. If you control the Reapers you're just doing what Cerberus tried to achieve for the past two games, and worked against them. If you assimilate, combinging synthetics with organics for eternal utopian (more on that soon), you're doing what Saren wanted to achieve in the first game. If you destroy them, which you set out to do all along, there's still the risk that people will not have learnt about the mistakes of AI and will make Reapers 2.0. Naturally I chose what I thought was the good ending: assimilation, but Lorerunner's excellent - and not uncharacteristic - analysis tells us it's more dystopian. That yes, there's peace, but at the cost of everyone being.... well, robots. Machines. Reapers. It's presented as happy-go-lucky and I was satisfied by the ending, but I can't help but shake the feeling it was the worst choice. But then it subscribes to the term I coin, Roberts' Trident: when a video game offers a choice, the third one is always the cop-out / the easy one.

Most Obsidian offerings are good at reflecting this in their dialogue options: Pillars of Eternity did wonders with its Paladins, where each knightly order had different dispositions they favoured. Some favour Diplomacy and Honesty, whereas some prefer Aggression and Cruelty. Using different dispositions to those meant your powers could be weakened and stripped from your character, which is similar to how Dungeons & Dragons handles Paladin alignment. Alpha Protocol forgoes the persuasion/intimidation dialogue options and instead goes for Professional, Suave and Aggressive. This allows you to be one of 'the three JBs' respectively, and allows you to decide how you're going to use your newfound independence. You can get revenge, build an illegal arms trafficking network, information brokerage, or just be a horndog. To quote The Travelling Wilburys, "In New Jersey anything's legal, as long as you don't get caught." To a lesser extent Obsidian's Tyranny is less about good and evil and more about a authoritarian-default political compass. While the game is billed as 'evil has won the battle of good and evil', and there is as close as I can say objectively good and evil aspects to Kyros and the few freedom fighters left, it's about the varying shades of evil that exist in this new world. It's more about order versus freedom, law versus chaos in a decidedly dystopian world. And of course we've talked about Fallout: New Vegas in the thread you're referring to in the OP. I'll think on some more games but it's just Obsidian ones that immediately come to mind. I won't spoil anything, partly because there's not much to spoil given we're not even in the first patch yet, but World of Warcraft's Shadowlands expansion hints at a lot of things that seem.... wrong. I hope it's not as black and white (or as they incorrectly call it, "morally grey") as their developers have made objective morality in this universe have so far.

Such news is expected but still unfortunate all the same. I do so enjoy arcade machines, the few times I get to play them as the most consistent experience I've had with them is during holidays in Wales. Given arcades are a much larger part of Japan's entertainment culture and gaming landscape than here in the UK, it's only the more painful to hear. I wish the manufacturers, owners and players of these machines the best. ^^

The monetisation strategy today appears to be asking why spend money on a sequel if the first game is still making money. When Rainbow Six: Siege eventually loses enough revenue a sequel will be ready to release with an even greater amount of income due to the idea of it being fresher. Until then Ubisoft will continue to make the current game easier to attract new people with alternative editions, starter packs and sales.

I know the two share the same universe but that's as official as this news gets. The rest is what is essentially baseless rumour. If Alan Wake 2: Castle Rock Boogaloo happens, the rumours won't be a 'told you so' because the evidence didn't exist until Remedy put something obvious out themselves.

There's only one I can think of, two if you count Computer Exchange (CeX) but that's a franchise. It's getting harder to find local retro shops, and I can't blame anyone moving such a business online.

Assuming we're talking about the Yakuza spin-off published by SEGA it's a matter of when rather than if, but that could be anywhere between yesterday and 2031. They seem confident enough in the Yakuza property and the PC market to sell the games at very generous prices, so Judgement may come after all of the main series games are released, perhaps remastered in the same way as Kiwami. EDIT: April 23rd 2021 for the PS5/Xbox Series release. If you don't own either of those systems, get a used copy.

I distinctly remember getting my mum to help me with Donkey Kong Country and Plok! on the SNES. Bless her, she was trying her best to get constructive things done while dad worked and I waited for 144 FPS to be invented. When my mum was working, it was Duke Nukem and Resident Evil for dad in between watching sports.

I was going into this about to say I'm not surprised, what with Blizzard doing Blizzconline for their 30th anniversary, but Blizzard's one studio and a very well funded one at that. E3 on the other hand is torn between being a consumer trade show and developer conference, which has served both demographics decreasingly well as time has gone on. I had wondered if last year's E3 would be the last, but this could well be the last one if they don't get developers on board where Gamescom and GDC can.

Activision-Blizzard. For all the videos people do on their stock price going down when they do an oopsie, commentators constantly fail to mention their stock price going up immediately after a controversy has moved on. Without fail, ATVI soars mere days after reports of an unpopular hotfix or patch or a dodgy expansion launch, and currently shows no signs of stopping.

Prior to knowing the word was used derogitoraly in my country, I had said to myself I'm going to play "Spanx, the spastic weasel" in Mad Dash Racing on the original Xbox. My dad's newspaper rustled, and he stared daggers at me across the living room. I tried my damndest to keep a straight face asking "what?", and he resumed reading his paper after his fuming glare. I continued to play as Spanx, and will never be able to play that or Whiplash without cringing at that moment ever again.