Withywarlock

I have, and reviewed it for Downloadable Discontent. I thought it was OK, and the progenitor for the later Origins-style of games with how different some gameplay elements are. I suppose it'll do in a jiffy if you need me ACIV:BF. ^^

The dice game, Farkle, in Kingdom Come: Deliverance is one of my favourites. A simple maths game that's helped by the fact you can cheat with loaded die, which some NPCs will have (and can be stolen). Similarly, poker and blackjack in Red Dead Redemption 2, or really any game that offers it. Not sure if you know this but that's a reference to a mage (and the scroll to cast such a spell) you can find early on in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Apt given that looks like the expansion which takes place there in Skyrim. ^^

So just to be clear, inflation isn't a good enough reason to up a subscription fee if backlash is great enough? I think I may need to post this news on a few World of Warcraft forums and correct some of my former fellow MVPs....

The more I look at it the more striking the resemblance is. But then Bulletville doesn't have an entirely original cast either. I'm seeing at least four familiar character concepts here too:

I would imagine it does. I remember a particularly annoying dream sequence, which on the PC required me to fiddle with my GPU's v-sync and such because apparently 144 FPS broke the platforming. I can tell you thing or two about inner turmoil getting that game to run well....

I will confess, and should've mentioned this in the previous post you're referring to, the Special Edition does wonders for colour palette. The sky is a nice deep blue, the trees and leaves and grass are all brought out and the clothing is somewhat more striking. It's just that in the original game the low contrast brought down the mood of the game, which wasn't low in really any sense so it was just this strange juxtaposition. While mods allow for such things to be resolved I still don't understand how Bethesda went from the grey Arena to bright Daggerfall, to sometimes colourful Battlespire, to the clownshoes Redguard, to brown Morrowind, to the exploded paint factory Oblivion, ending on Sludgeville, USA otherwise known as Skyrim. Maybe a significant portion of their ~400 employees consist of dogs who can't see many colours? That might also explain the bugs.

I struggle to understand why this is going on Game Boy and not just being styled as such for modern systems. As a feat of engineering it's impressive. As a product, Adventure Islands games kinda does this without the faffing of needing an emulator or an original Game Boy. Still, that music is so catchy I'd get the game just to hear that soundtrack. If they sell the soundtrack, I'd buy it twice.

I'm getting better for this thanks to games such as Dark Souls, wherein it does a brilliant job of encouraging using all those items, to say it's the sort of game where you'd think you'd hoard it for that just-in-case moment. Turns out there's a few of those moments besides the bosses. Especially where crafting is concerned, I try to make as much as I can and hoard such items away for future purposes. At the end of the day, it's better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have them!

There was one Punisher game which has in recent years garnered a cult following, but I've neither seen nor played it for myself so I can't say what it would be like, however I can see Druckmann being a good fit for it given his writing and directing style. The Last of Us wasn't necessarily my cup of tea, but I'd give Druckmann's Punisher a fair shake given the chance.

Quite, a liberal splash of colour can do wonders to bring out a game's graphical fidelity. It's one of the many reasons I had the unpopular opinion at the time that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was graphically unimpressive at best - it was varying shades of grey, and some otherwise unconvincing snow effects. The only thing that carried the visuals was the music. I tried to add more to this but I found myself sounding as though I hate 'realistic' graphics. Quite the contrary, I enjoy them when they're new, but they are the first victim of age more than any mechanics, tropes or other choices that go into making a video game a video game. Even quick-time events (QTEs) have aged better than some previous gen games' visuals.

The first thing would be to try to treat the injury and go through rehabilitation. Straining myself trying to play during the healing process is probably not going to do me any favours in the long(er) run. I'd also have to make some changes to my lifestyle, finding ways to adapt without causing too much pain to my thumb and/or other damaged appendages. The psychology also matters, so finding another hobby to keep my mind off the injury and loss of an old one would also be something to do in between exercises recommended by my physiologist or whoever would be responsible for aiding my recovery. Books that I could hold, writing (and practicing doing so in my weaker hand if the dominant one was injured), among other activities would good to keep me occupied. As you say, Kane, adaptive controllers could be an idea. I think ZooMaa is in a position to help advocate for equipment that makes gaming re-accessible for people like him, and open up gaming to other people who have never played before because of other motor disabilities. Such things aren't going to come about waiting with our broken thumbs up our backsides; there has to be awareness and acceptance. Nobody is less deserving of enjoying this hobby because of a disability.

Alpha Protocol is sadly no longer available digitally because SEGA weren't going to pay for the music rights again, and thus the game had to be pulled. You can still find keys being sold on a number of sites, and physical copies are plentifully available for low prices, but it's a shame that it can't be purchased directly from the publisher. Interesting, I was always under the impression it was a cult classic. I might get the game myself to see what all the fuss was about, but it being a Beat 'Em Up game, I will likely miss the appeal. Then again, I say the same about a survival horror game I've just started and have fallen in love with: Deadly Premonition. ^^

Good on them, I say. This is the only sort of hot-blooded passion I'll excuse (and encourage) in video games, where art inspires not death threats and ranting, but awareness of a real world problem and the drive to fix it, even if it's just donations to those doing the work. Well done!

The Elder Scrolls IV: The Shivering Isles was for the longest time my benchmark for DLC in reviews. That's pretty hard to top given the level of creative freedom the devs were allowed, and how well it compliments the base game which is primarily about the Daedric Princes. I can't recall what my latest benchmark was, especially for linear games, but I did enjoy some of We Happy Few's DLC, mostly because the base game wasn't all that good and the additional content contrasted with it.

A number of points I've come to learn: In the case of adversity, what is typically called "AI" should provide a fair challenge. They should have a sense of self-preservation, employing whatever abilities and environmental advantages there are befitting their level of survival instincts. It's easy to make an AI that can kill the player, that's not the issue developers face when there's 'bad' AI in their game; what is more difficult is making a fair AI that hides its intelligence well enough that it can ultimately be defeated. F.E.A.R is a good example of AI which isn't as clever as it seems, merely ticking off actions on a list of priorities with some dialogue interspersed. In the case of passiveness or friendliness, AI should position itself in places where it won't obstruct the player, and take enough time 'guessing' the player's actions to follow, move out of the way, and to defend oneself. They should stick to their routines and respond when said routines are broken, before responding with hostility or mild indifference before resuming said routine. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a fascinating subject for the case study of NPC behaviour. There's all sorts of tales during the QA testing of how NPCs, particularly guards, would cause havoc because of the 'responsibility' ratings, social dispositions and the actions they could take.

Never above Normal difficulty unless it's for an achievement after completing the game the first time. I'm very quick nowadays to put the game to a lower difficulty or resort to a cheat engine because I'm no longer concerned about 'proving myself' to just about anyone, least of all a video game.

I made a response to their non-apology here, the only excuse they really have being that Covid-19 has screwed up development. Even so, it's not so hard to imagine that Cyberpunk's issues were happening long before the epidemic. At the end of the day this gentleman isn't going to suffer the same (if any) consequences that the staff we're told not to blame will. And I don't blame the grunts who chose to stay overtime after having their arm twisted behind their back by not getting shitcanned to see their 9-year passion product being delivered. I blame Mr. Iwiński, and nobody else besides those above him.

I finished the first two games last year and did a write-up for the first on r/patientgamers, the second game having little else to add to it. Very good neo-noir games that I'm glad I played and may come back to in the future, and revitilised a love of third-person shooters. I'd recommend them for anyone who can stomach the hassles I had with mods.

I think the problem was more that they were sharing such information online, where it might be construed as tutorialising hacking. Even so, that doesn't seem like a legal use of the Fair Use system. Like Activision before them in regards to cheats in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, they'll hit anyone with copyright strikes and the like to keep the news of exploits getting out. Because there's no precident for whether showing gameplay footage and screenshots unauthorised is entirely legal or not, we're in this Wild West of copyright law where it depends entirely on the copyright holder's feelings at present. Alas, it's likely to stay the way it is because YouTubers and the like are the best (not to mention cheapest) marketing a game publisher can utilise. However, I think someone will eventually get tired of companies such as Nintendo rocking the boat and ruin it for them and/or viewers of such material with court rulings (see how the industry failed to regulate its own loot box addiction).

Only with very rare exceptions, but I'm not fussy about the case especially if it's a rarer one like a Blockbusters rental case. And besides, some promotional materials like the PIzza Hut Playstation 1 games didn't come with 'proper' cases, only those tacky thin jewel ones (not that the thicker ones lasted long either), so I don't mind those either.

There's the Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood action game too, which might satiate fans of the Old World of Darkness, but being developed by Cyanide Studios (Styx: Master of Shadows, Call of Cthulu, Blood Bowl), I fully expect it to be top Eurojank and nothing else. The gameplay trailer below looks promising, but we'll see in due time if it's worth its £44.99 asking price.

I hadn't considered mobile. Come to think of it, a touch screen would solve a lot of the interface issues music games suffered, especially with a gamepad over a mouse. I may have to look on Android for some such games now! ^^

I find whenever anyone says "the less you know, the better it is" immediately spoils the surprise. I know now to expect the unexpected. So, any games I mention going forward will instantly spoil it for you. Here goes. Undertale is a game where I massively benefit from knowing that the more you kill the more difficult the ending gets. I said sod that, and refunded the game. I was also glad to know that in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice the curse that spread up her arm was in fact pointless, existing only to scare the player into a false sense of permadeath; had I not known that my playthrough would've been almost entirely frustrating, rather than frustrating beyond the first half. After the first half it was just plain boring. And of course we can't forget to mention Spec Ops: The Line, where without the shock of its most infamous scene becomes a bit of a drag, and its ending has less shock value. I suppose in the case of two of those games the spoiler comes from how critically you're thinking about the genre. It probably says more about the quality of general games discourse than the game itself when the shock is to not do what the genre has taught players to do successfully over the course of the decades it's been around.

The most overlooked method is riding horseback. You'll remain in combat for a while but you'll have put plenty of distance between yourself and your enemy. Going into cities also helps as guards can stop attackers provided you're not guilty of attacking a civilian. Failing horseback, Speed and Athletics (and Acrobatics for the jumps) can be super useful too as you'll be able to outrun Ma'iq the Liar and The Black Horse Courier. Keeping in mind with all of this, have an idea of what you want to do next. Don't think of it so much as running away, as running toward an objective. Find somewhere to sell your gear, turn in a quest, a dungeon to clear. Putting doors and obstructions to line-of-sight between you and your enemy will reduce their desire for pursuit.

Some exist on Steam but they're often rudimentary at best and don't compete with other extensive offerings at a greater price point. I remember loving Music 2000 for years, and a few years back I discovered Fluid which is.... strange, to say the least. I'd love for such things to return to consoles though. The pandemic has been a great time for people to discover music, and I think Music 2021 would be a welcome addition to people's libraries. ^^