I liked Divinity OS2's system, where you can create a custom character but then assign a narrative background to them.
So you can still have people refer to you by your name instead of having to awkwardly refer to you by your title all the time, and you can have an established history with existing characters instead of just being a stranger to everyone you meet, and you can get a decent quality of dialogue that fits your character background instead of just general responses.
This was a really good solution to this problem. I think there's the option of letting the player make a character but have the main character of the story be an NPC. It's one of the things I really liked about Oblivion's plot.
Geralt: tall, sexy, capable, experienced, lonesome, long white mane, two swords, cat eyes, superpowers, magic spells, somehow not terrible to read about
Geralt: tall, sexy, capable, experienced, lonesome, long white mane, two swords, cat eyes, superpowers, magic spells, somehow not terrible to read about
I've only read the first short story collection, but I want to say the games do more with his character
The 2nd to last free Epic game of 2019, is Hello Neighbor. Please, contain your enthusiasm. https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/hello-neighbor/home
Tomorrow is either the last or 2nd to last game of the promotion, and it's one of the Yooka-Laylee games. Leaked lists from datamining say that it's the new game, Yooka-Laylee and The Impossible Lair, that just came out like two months ago, and I hope it is because it's supposed to be way way better than the original.
The 2nd to last free Epic game of 2019, is Hello Neighbor. Please, contain your enthusiasm. https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/hello-neighbor/home
Tomorrow is either the last or 2nd to last game of the promotion, and it's one of the Yooka-Laylee games. Leaked lists from datamining say that it's the new game, Yooka-Laylee and The Impossible Lair, that just came out like two months ago, and I hope it is because it's supposed to be way way better than the original.
I'm more partial to 3D Platformers, but Impossible Lair has the benefit of not being a kickstarter game stuck with 4 zones that they balloon to ridiculous size to make it feel like a full game's worth of content. Also the impossible lair mechanic is a cool idea at least.
Epic consistently giving away games has kind of discouraged me from buying mid tier games. Why buy it now when it might be free later? This doesn’t seem healthy for the industry. Hopefully devs who go on the free list get a decent payout at least
If you lay out all of Geralt's character traits it sounds like something I would have thought was really cool when I was twelve.
It's a triumph of writing and, especially, acting that I ended up loving him as much as I did in Witcher 3
He works so so much better when Yennefer and Ciri are part of the story, and the other Witchers
Him being a devoted family member and part of an organization makes him so much more likable than when he’s a wildman bachelor fucking his way across the land
Plus the beard
+6
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Earlier today I had the choice to give a book of necromantic magic to a creepy mage I don't really trust, or keep it for myself. I gave it to him even though I feel like that might come back to bite me in the arse, because my Geralt is all about those orens. It's fun to play someone more mercenary than my Shepard who was frankly a bit of a boy scout, but at the same time my inner voice is yelling at me for giving away what might be an important plot device which usually I would hoard.
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
If you lay out all of Geralt's character traits it sounds like something I would have thought was really cool when I was twelve.
It's a triumph of writing and, especially, acting that I ended up loving him as much as I did in Witcher 3
He works so so much better when Yennefer and Ciri are part of the story, and the other Witchers
Him being a devoted family member and part of an organization makes him so much more likable than when he’s a wildman bachelor fucking his way across the land
Plus the beard
This is definitely also part of it, but I feel like the writers, Doug Cockle (the English voice of Geralt), and actually to a pretty significant effect the animators responsible for the fucking facial expressions in that game all put in some incredible work to making this incredibly stupid character concept into a legitimately interesting and funny character that I was honestly surprised I became invested in.
+5
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LasbrookIt takes a lot to make a stewWhen it comes to me and youRegistered Userregular
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
I think the problem is they're not really feeling enough value for paying into their "Pro" tier, which is understandable when you figure that Stadia games are running at medium and being scaled up anyway
If you lay out all of Geralt's character traits it sounds like something I would have thought was really cool when I was twelve.
It's a triumph of writing and, especially, acting that I ended up loving him as much as I did in Witcher 3
He works so so much better when Yennefer and Ciri are part of the story, and the other Witchers
Him being a devoted family member and part of an organization makes him so much more likable than when he’s a wildman bachelor fucking his way across the land
Plus the beard
This is definitely also part of it, but I feel like the writers, Doug Cockle (the English voice of Geralt), and actually to a pretty significant effect the animators responsible for the fucking facial expressions in that game all put in some incredible work to making this incredibly stupid character concept into a legitimately interesting and funny character that I was honestly surprised I became invested in.
Witcher 3 spoilers
You're not kidding with the facial animations. The scene where Geralt finally finds Ciri on the island, but initially thinks she's dead. That shit broke me. Geralt doesn't say a word, but you can see all of that pain just etched onto his face.
Just before the Holiday Hangout, folks were talking about their decade in games, and it got me thinking about that as well. This isn't a rigorous or exhaustive list of games, but it's stuff that floated to the surface, so must have made an impression on me.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution/Mankind Divided - I can't be objective about these games. I'm not sure what it is, but when I play them I feel less like I am playing video games and more like I am snuggled in a blanket and eating comfort food. The music, the franchise conventions, the game loop. It's Pavlovian, almost. Maybe it's because the original Deus Ex came at the right time to make an impact on me. Maybe it's the time I stayed awake all night, lights off, playing Human Revolution while Hurricane Irene raged outside my window. Immersive sims (though I think this isn't the preferred genre name anymore) are my favorite genre, and Deus Ex - for me - is the ur-immersive sim. A lot of folks didn't like Jensen as a protagonist, but the guy grew on me pretty quickly (and was more interesting that JC Denton, I thought). A lot of folks say that the original DX was a TRUE immersive sim and that HR and MD rely too much on planned routes, but I think those folks' cybershades are maybe a little too rose-colored. A lot of folks say that the games didn't tackle inequality enough, didn't say anything meaningful, and... well, fair enough. I think the series has been a blend of schlocky pulp and thoughtful political criticism from the get-go, so there's no reason they couldn't have gone deeper with MD. The Deus Ex series is my absolute all-time favorite series, and if I could have one games wish granted, it would be for Eidos Montreal to get to make more of these games that they clearly have a deep love for.
Into the Breach - I think this is on the list of Perfect Games. The design is extremely tight. The art is perfect for the experience it's trying to evoke. The UI communicates very complex ideas in pretty clear ways. The miniature nature of the battles makes it easier to fit the whole thing in your head. The flaws are few and don't spoil the game. Sometimes you get a bad situation that's genuinely unresolvable, or anyway you can't see how to resolve it, and that feels incredibly bad - but when you figure out some grandmaster set of moves to get through the turn and inch out ahead, you feel brilliant. My biggest problem with the game when it came out was that I had to stop playing it when I left home - and then it came out on the Switch, so that became a total non-issue.
Hitman (2016)/Hitman 2 - I think this might be one of my personal Perfect Games. The thing I love most about stealth games is the clockwork world that whirls in a stable loop until you come in, study it, and then push it, destabilize it. It's a power fantasy, it's puzzle-solving, and it tickles my pleasure receptors the right way. Hitman (2016) is maybe the most perfect implementation of that. I've never felt the serious urge to 100% the achievements for a game, but I spent a lot of time getting close to 100%ing the in-game challenges in Hitman (and then my kid was born and suddenly I had way less time). I spent so much time in this game that I built up pretty accurate mental maps of the levels. I'd be washing dishes, but in my head I'd be planning out the most efficient route to knocking out several challenges in one go in Sapienza. I think it's a mark of success when a games gets me thinking about it so much even when I'm not playing it. I wish I had more time to pour into Hitman than I do.
Diablo 3 - The last year or two have been busy and stressful for me, and Diablo 3 has been a really great stress reliever. The Season Journey provides a satisfying sense of progression, the mid-tier game doesn't requite much thought (which means I can either zone out and rest my brain, or listen to podcasts), and blowing up waves of demons is very cathartic.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - I've spent years kinda light-heartedly mocking Metal Gear characterization and storytelling, all without having ever played any of the games or really even knowing what the games were like, just knowing that the plots were convoluted and winding and tonally lurching from side to side. When I read the reviews for MGSV, I felt a burning urge to play it, so fuck it, maybe I can try the fifth iteration of this universally-lauded and acclaimed franchise. Readers, I loved it. I feel justified in my previous mocking, because the story is pretty convoluted and lurching, and the characterization ranges from really good to "you will feel ashamed of your words & deeds", but the cinematic moments were very good and boy did I love the moment-to-moment play. D-Dog is best dog, no comparison. Getting to actually scout out a base to tag guards in the HUD felt revolutionary for a stealth game. Every stealth game from now on should have a Fulton Extraction Device. Also, if I'm honest, a really big part of it was that my first language was Russian, and it always gives me a thrill to hear it in a video game. For half the game, I could eavesdrop on enemy conversations without having to pay attention to the in-game translator; I could see where the written in-game translations differed from what was being said in the audio; I could hear which voice actors were probably native speakers and which were struggling through a phonetic guide or something. It was neat. It felt good to see in a video game a part of myself that I almost never see in non-Eastern-European games.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown - I played a bunch of the original X-Com, but frankly it required more work of me than I was willing to put in, so I would never get far. This new version was beautifully streamlined and let me focus on the things I found fun. I will admit to to save-scumming, but that's fine with me; it let me live out the fantasy of a team of badasses getting better at their job. I saw a tip online about changing the colors of your soldier's armor to reflect their class, so you could at a glance see who's where, and it elevated the game for me. Felt like a real team of professional operatives. We can include XCOM 2 here as well, I loved it just as much (although I still haven't finished a War of the Chosen playthrough).
Skyrim - Almost a given. I've loved the Elder Scrolls series since Morrowind, and although none of them have been as weird and alien and refreshing as Morrowind (and, I suspect, never will be), Skyrim is still one of the most absorbing and engaging experiences I've had. I loved Morrowind because it was unique; I... well, I didn't play much of Oblivion because I found the setting very by-the-numbers and the game not fun; I loved Skyrim because it was an actually playable and enjoyable game - but also because of my investment in TES lore. That moment when I left Dragonsreach and the ground shook and I heard the name "Dovahkiin" shouted on the wind, I stopped and sat staring at the screen for several moments. I'm the flavor of dork who read the Pocket Guide to the Empire, 1st Edition, so I knew exactly what that meant: that I was being invited to become legend. That moment is absolutely enshrined in my pantheon of deeply-affecting personal gaming memories. As with any hugely popular and wide-reaching game, later years saw some natural backlash against it: the game was buggy, the quest design was uninventive and boiled down to draugr in tombs, the games power fantasy on top of power fantasy, so on. It is all those things, all valid and necessary complaints, but I don't think that takes away from the game's accomplishments. I loved Morrowind for the wild setting and the open world that felt like the future of games, but the game systems were staunchly mid-90s, and I had to fight them every step. Skyrim was so effortlessly playable. I think that's an accomplishment. It has created experiences for me like no other - and then mods proceeded to reinvent and revitalize the game, which I can write another essay about. Sure do wish Jeremy Soule weren't a sexual predator, though!
Minecraft - I bought into this when Notch was still making, like, weekly updates or whatever it was. What an amazing experience. I burned out on it a long time ago, so can't speak to the current state of the game, but in those early days it completely took over my game-time. I found that I wasn't very creative, the blank-sheet problem is very real, but I enjoyed building crummy boxy buildings nonetheless; even more, I enjoyed walking around and looking at the procedurally-generated landscape, which I found profoundly beautiful. I reached a point where my internal goal-setting mechanisms exhausted their capacity, and my playing petered out. Since I was mostly done with the game, I figured there was no harm in possibly destroying my install with some mods. Right aroudn this time, the very first iteration of the BuildCraft mod came out, and I tumbled back into Minecraft even harder than before. BuildCraft added automated quarries (which automatically excavated the ground and sucked out blocks, a task I'd grown tired of doing by hand) and pipes (which could connect to those quarries and transport extracted blocks to chests). It radically transformed the game for me; rather than spending my time on the repetitive task of extracting resources, I could instead spend my time planning pipe layouts and organizing storage solutions, which I enjoyed a lot more. If anything, I put even more time into Minecraft; I'd leave my computer running while I slept and went to work to let the quarries brutalize the landscape. I mean, this think-piece about the intersection of base human tendencies, industrialization, and environmental harm writes itself, but heck, I was having a great time! Then BuildCraft started becoming much more complicated, an end rather than a means. The recipes became more numerous and involved, tech tiers were added, and I could no longer use it as a simple tool to automate something I didn't want to personally do. I stopped playing Minecraft at that point, but it's been fascinating to watch the development of the sandbox/crafting genre. When I look at something like Satisfactory, I see a lineage stretching directly to Minecraft + BuildCraft. Sure do wish Notch weren't a piece of shit, though!
No Man's Sky - I can't think of a game that faced a harsher backlash at release. I can't think of a team that has quietly put in a more transformative work over the years, all without additional fees to the players. I also can't think of a game that made me feel the kind of emotions that the launch version of the game did; that overpowering, aching feeling of loneliness, of being a speck in a giant universe, of not having a home your can always escape to when things get hard, of knowing that there is nothing inherently special about this patch of ground as opposed to what's over the hill. I didn't love the launch version of the game and I don't love what the game has become, but I think it's a tremendous loss to games as an art form and as a culture that the original experience of loneliness has been patched out.
Saints Row the Third/IV/Gat Out of Hell - I know a lot of 1 and 2 fans don't like the over-the-top direction that the series went in, but the Third was my entry into the series and it got me onboard immediately. When I tell people about it, I always talk about how its bombastic first mission would be the last mission in most other games. A game that understood it was a game, and took joy in that rather being a po-faced. I suspect that a lot of the stuff wouldn't play as well with me today (even ignorant-as-hell-2012-me knew that the shipping container full of prostitutes was bad), but at the time I genuinely fell in love with the characters, and felt that the series did the dumbest jokes in a very smart way, and the smartest jokes in a very dumb way (this is a compliment). The presentation of the entire "Enter the Dominatrix" DLC is one of my favorite dumb-smart jokes in gaming. Soaring through the sky in IV as Stan Bush's "The Touch" plays is unmatched by any game before or since. I was bummed to not play as my Boss in Gat Out of He'll, but Kinzie fuckin' rocks.
Portal 2 - Portal came outta nowhere and knocked me on my ass, it was "you can do that?!" moments one after the other towards the end, and if you told me that a sequel would be just as good I wouldn't have believed you. A sequel that inflated in size and scope past the bounds of the original, at that. And yet. A narrative that fit the world and engaged me. Cool puzzles. Using achievements to make jokes in the course of play. That moment during the last boss encounter where I thought "Wait. Wait, can you oh my GOD you can", you know the moment I'm talking about. I don't remember the text in video game achievements; I remember the text in THIS video game achievement, because I thought that exact text the second before it popped up. EDIT: Forgot to say: J.K. Simmons is a treasure.
The Stanley Parable - First played it as a Half-Life 2 mod. One of the most inventive uses of the video game medium I've seen so far. I think it's a good sign for a medium when works of art in that medium start to introspect, and The Stanley Parable - while generally comprehensible to people who don't spend half their day on a video game forum - had the most impact if video game conventions are as ingrained in you as "left" and "right". What a cool game.
If you lay out all of Geralt's character traits it sounds like something I would have thought was really cool when I was twelve.
It's a triumph of writing and, especially, acting that I ended up loving him as much as I did in Witcher 3
He works so so much better when Yennefer and Ciri are part of the story, and the other Witchers
Him being a devoted family member and part of an organization makes him so much more likable than when he’s a wildman bachelor fucking his way across the land
Plus the beard
This is definitely also part of it, but I feel like the writers, Doug Cockle (the English voice of Geralt), and actually to a pretty significant effect the animators responsible for the fucking facial expressions in that game all put in some incredible work to making this incredibly stupid character concept into a legitimately interesting and funny character that I was honestly surprised I became invested in.
I don't like Geralts voice.
Which is odd, because he is excellently voice acted.
Not over acted, conveys emmotions, fits the character in that i can believe that person sounds like that.
Yet somehow i don't like Geralts voice...
Witcher 3 is weird in that, on paper, i should fucking love this game.
I have no major complaints about it other than that i find the combat somewhat fiddly and unreliable, and it has so many great things to it, interesting exploration, good writing, side quests, huge open world...
Yet somehow i can't get contact with the game. Should probably give it another go at some point.
+1
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Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
Watching streamers Coh and Ellohime fight it out with streamers Sacriel and Anthony Kongphan in Tarkov is comedy. Both groups keep running into each other and not realizing it (they're all friends).
Haven't had time to play it yet, but the Quick Look Giant Bomb did looked really good. Looks like a really good Donkey Kong Country-style platformer, with a very interesting overworld.
Watching streamers Coh and Ellohime fight it out with streamers Sacriel and Anthony Kongphan in Tarkov is comedy. Both groups keep running into each other and not realizing it (they're all friends).
I am shocked that Coh survived since Sacriel had a thermal scope.
BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
With the release calendar being... exceptionally dry this time of year, over the next few days let's take a look at some upcoming games that should be coming out in 2020
starting off with my favorite genre: RACOONS WITH GUNS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXkGXDTmO7o
Despair, capitalism and the need of seeking for a better future.
Damnview: Built from Nothing is a simulation sandbox about Western culture and social class differences, coming to PC & consoles in 2020.
Damnview: Built from Nothing (Sandbox, Simulation, Political, Raccoon)
Backbone is an upcoming noir-inspired detective adventure. As raccoon private eye Howard Lotor, sniff out clues, collect evidence, interrogate witnesses, and explore beautiful pixel art version of dystopian Vancouver, BC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-24fSZ9l4Tc
BIOMUTANT® is an open-world, post-apocalyptic Kung-Fu fable RPG, with a unique martial arts styled combat system allowing you to mix melee, shooting and mutant ability action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOAYVgm_V_4
Tanuki Sunset pits a talented raccoon against a procedurally-generated hill, having you test your mettle against the synthwave-themed seaside road.
Posts
This was a really good solution to this problem. I think there's the option of letting the player make a character but have the main character of the story be an NPC. It's one of the things I really liked about Oblivion's plot.
I've only read the first short story collection, but I want to say the games do more with his character
Tomorrow is either the last or 2nd to last game of the promotion, and it's one of the Yooka-Laylee games. Leaked lists from datamining say that it's the new game, Yooka-Laylee and The Impossible Lair, that just came out like two months ago, and I hope it is because it's supposed to be way way better than the original.
I love Geralt, but that list can be pretty silly when reviewed in isolation.
I'm more partial to 3D Platformers, but Impossible Lair has the benefit of not being a kickstarter game stuck with 4 zones that they balloon to ridiculous size to make it feel like a full game's worth of content. Also the impossible lair mechanic is a cool idea at least.
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
Fun fact - Witcher 2/3 sidequest stuff
Neat! I forget what I did on that quest.
He works so so much better when Yennefer and Ciri are part of the story, and the other Witchers
Him being a devoted family member and part of an organization makes him so much more likable than when he’s a wildman bachelor fucking his way across the land
Plus the beard
Earlier today I had the choice to give a book of necromantic magic to a creepy mage I don't really trust, or keep it for myself. I gave it to him even though I feel like that might come back to bite me in the arse, because my Geralt is all about those orens. It's fun to play someone more mercenary than my Shepard who was frankly a bit of a boy scout, but at the same time my inner voice is yelling at me for giving away what might be an important plot device which usually I would hoard.
Well don't worry, next month you get Rise instead
Since a third of their library is Tomb Raider games
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
You’d think for something that’s had as bad a launch and publicity as Stadia they’d try a bit harder on customer engagement.
everywhere he has gone since his tenure with sony ended, destruction and baffling pr follows
Steam
Maybe if PS+ or Xbox Gold was the literal only way to play games on those systems.
This is definitely also part of it, but I feel like the writers, Doug Cockle (the English voice of Geralt), and actually to a pretty significant effect the animators responsible for the fucking facial expressions in that game all put in some incredible work to making this incredibly stupid character concept into a legitimately interesting and funny character that I was honestly surprised I became invested in.
Stadia has a storefront you buy games from.
Steam
Witcher 3 spoilers
Deus Ex: Human Revolution/Mankind Divided - I can't be objective about these games. I'm not sure what it is, but when I play them I feel less like I am playing video games and more like I am snuggled in a blanket and eating comfort food. The music, the franchise conventions, the game loop. It's Pavlovian, almost. Maybe it's because the original Deus Ex came at the right time to make an impact on me. Maybe it's the time I stayed awake all night, lights off, playing Human Revolution while Hurricane Irene raged outside my window. Immersive sims (though I think this isn't the preferred genre name anymore) are my favorite genre, and Deus Ex - for me - is the ur-immersive sim. A lot of folks didn't like Jensen as a protagonist, but the guy grew on me pretty quickly (and was more interesting that JC Denton, I thought). A lot of folks say that the original DX was a TRUE immersive sim and that HR and MD rely too much on planned routes, but I think those folks' cybershades are maybe a little too rose-colored. A lot of folks say that the games didn't tackle inequality enough, didn't say anything meaningful, and... well, fair enough. I think the series has been a blend of schlocky pulp and thoughtful political criticism from the get-go, so there's no reason they couldn't have gone deeper with MD. The Deus Ex series is my absolute all-time favorite series, and if I could have one games wish granted, it would be for Eidos Montreal to get to make more of these games that they clearly have a deep love for.
Into the Breach - I think this is on the list of Perfect Games. The design is extremely tight. The art is perfect for the experience it's trying to evoke. The UI communicates very complex ideas in pretty clear ways. The miniature nature of the battles makes it easier to fit the whole thing in your head. The flaws are few and don't spoil the game. Sometimes you get a bad situation that's genuinely unresolvable, or anyway you can't see how to resolve it, and that feels incredibly bad - but when you figure out some grandmaster set of moves to get through the turn and inch out ahead, you feel brilliant. My biggest problem with the game when it came out was that I had to stop playing it when I left home - and then it came out on the Switch, so that became a total non-issue.
Hitman (2016)/Hitman 2 - I think this might be one of my personal Perfect Games. The thing I love most about stealth games is the clockwork world that whirls in a stable loop until you come in, study it, and then push it, destabilize it. It's a power fantasy, it's puzzle-solving, and it tickles my pleasure receptors the right way. Hitman (2016) is maybe the most perfect implementation of that. I've never felt the serious urge to 100% the achievements for a game, but I spent a lot of time getting close to 100%ing the in-game challenges in Hitman (and then my kid was born and suddenly I had way less time). I spent so much time in this game that I built up pretty accurate mental maps of the levels. I'd be washing dishes, but in my head I'd be planning out the most efficient route to knocking out several challenges in one go in Sapienza. I think it's a mark of success when a games gets me thinking about it so much even when I'm not playing it. I wish I had more time to pour into Hitman than I do.
Diablo 3 - The last year or two have been busy and stressful for me, and Diablo 3 has been a really great stress reliever. The Season Journey provides a satisfying sense of progression, the mid-tier game doesn't requite much thought (which means I can either zone out and rest my brain, or listen to podcasts), and blowing up waves of demons is very cathartic.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - I've spent years kinda light-heartedly mocking Metal Gear characterization and storytelling, all without having ever played any of the games or really even knowing what the games were like, just knowing that the plots were convoluted and winding and tonally lurching from side to side. When I read the reviews for MGSV, I felt a burning urge to play it, so fuck it, maybe I can try the fifth iteration of this universally-lauded and acclaimed franchise. Readers, I loved it. I feel justified in my previous mocking, because the story is pretty convoluted and lurching, and the characterization ranges from really good to "you will feel ashamed of your words & deeds", but the cinematic moments were very good and boy did I love the moment-to-moment play. D-Dog is best dog, no comparison. Getting to actually scout out a base to tag guards in the HUD felt revolutionary for a stealth game. Every stealth game from now on should have a Fulton Extraction Device. Also, if I'm honest, a really big part of it was that my first language was Russian, and it always gives me a thrill to hear it in a video game. For half the game, I could eavesdrop on enemy conversations without having to pay attention to the in-game translator; I could see where the written in-game translations differed from what was being said in the audio; I could hear which voice actors were probably native speakers and which were struggling through a phonetic guide or something. It was neat. It felt good to see in a video game a part of myself that I almost never see in non-Eastern-European games.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown - I played a bunch of the original X-Com, but frankly it required more work of me than I was willing to put in, so I would never get far. This new version was beautifully streamlined and let me focus on the things I found fun. I will admit to to save-scumming, but that's fine with me; it let me live out the fantasy of a team of badasses getting better at their job. I saw a tip online about changing the colors of your soldier's armor to reflect their class, so you could at a glance see who's where, and it elevated the game for me. Felt like a real team of professional operatives. We can include XCOM 2 here as well, I loved it just as much (although I still haven't finished a War of the Chosen playthrough).
Skyrim - Almost a given. I've loved the Elder Scrolls series since Morrowind, and although none of them have been as weird and alien and refreshing as Morrowind (and, I suspect, never will be), Skyrim is still one of the most absorbing and engaging experiences I've had. I loved Morrowind because it was unique; I... well, I didn't play much of Oblivion because I found the setting very by-the-numbers and the game not fun; I loved Skyrim because it was an actually playable and enjoyable game - but also because of my investment in TES lore. That moment when I left Dragonsreach and the ground shook and I heard the name "Dovahkiin" shouted on the wind, I stopped and sat staring at the screen for several moments. I'm the flavor of dork who read the Pocket Guide to the Empire, 1st Edition, so I knew exactly what that meant: that I was being invited to become legend. That moment is absolutely enshrined in my pantheon of deeply-affecting personal gaming memories. As with any hugely popular and wide-reaching game, later years saw some natural backlash against it: the game was buggy, the quest design was uninventive and boiled down to draugr in tombs, the games power fantasy on top of power fantasy, so on. It is all those things, all valid and necessary complaints, but I don't think that takes away from the game's accomplishments. I loved Morrowind for the wild setting and the open world that felt like the future of games, but the game systems were staunchly mid-90s, and I had to fight them every step. Skyrim was so effortlessly playable. I think that's an accomplishment. It has created experiences for me like no other - and then mods proceeded to reinvent and revitalize the game, which I can write another essay about. Sure do wish Jeremy Soule weren't a sexual predator, though!
Minecraft - I bought into this when Notch was still making, like, weekly updates or whatever it was. What an amazing experience. I burned out on it a long time ago, so can't speak to the current state of the game, but in those early days it completely took over my game-time. I found that I wasn't very creative, the blank-sheet problem is very real, but I enjoyed building crummy boxy buildings nonetheless; even more, I enjoyed walking around and looking at the procedurally-generated landscape, which I found profoundly beautiful. I reached a point where my internal goal-setting mechanisms exhausted their capacity, and my playing petered out. Since I was mostly done with the game, I figured there was no harm in possibly destroying my install with some mods. Right aroudn this time, the very first iteration of the BuildCraft mod came out, and I tumbled back into Minecraft even harder than before. BuildCraft added automated quarries (which automatically excavated the ground and sucked out blocks, a task I'd grown tired of doing by hand) and pipes (which could connect to those quarries and transport extracted blocks to chests). It radically transformed the game for me; rather than spending my time on the repetitive task of extracting resources, I could instead spend my time planning pipe layouts and organizing storage solutions, which I enjoyed a lot more. If anything, I put even more time into Minecraft; I'd leave my computer running while I slept and went to work to let the quarries brutalize the landscape. I mean, this think-piece about the intersection of base human tendencies, industrialization, and environmental harm writes itself, but heck, I was having a great time! Then BuildCraft started becoming much more complicated, an end rather than a means. The recipes became more numerous and involved, tech tiers were added, and I could no longer use it as a simple tool to automate something I didn't want to personally do. I stopped playing Minecraft at that point, but it's been fascinating to watch the development of the sandbox/crafting genre. When I look at something like Satisfactory, I see a lineage stretching directly to Minecraft + BuildCraft. Sure do wish Notch weren't a piece of shit, though!
No Man's Sky - I can't think of a game that faced a harsher backlash at release. I can't think of a team that has quietly put in a more transformative work over the years, all without additional fees to the players. I also can't think of a game that made me feel the kind of emotions that the launch version of the game did; that overpowering, aching feeling of loneliness, of being a speck in a giant universe, of not having a home your can always escape to when things get hard, of knowing that there is nothing inherently special about this patch of ground as opposed to what's over the hill. I didn't love the launch version of the game and I don't love what the game has become, but I think it's a tremendous loss to games as an art form and as a culture that the original experience of loneliness has been patched out.
Saints Row the Third/IV/Gat Out of Hell - I know a lot of 1 and 2 fans don't like the over-the-top direction that the series went in, but the Third was my entry into the series and it got me onboard immediately. When I tell people about it, I always talk about how its bombastic first mission would be the last mission in most other games. A game that understood it was a game, and took joy in that rather being a po-faced. I suspect that a lot of the stuff wouldn't play as well with me today (even ignorant-as-hell-2012-me knew that the shipping container full of prostitutes was bad), but at the time I genuinely fell in love with the characters, and felt that the series did the dumbest jokes in a very smart way, and the smartest jokes in a very dumb way (this is a compliment). The presentation of the entire "Enter the Dominatrix" DLC is one of my favorite dumb-smart jokes in gaming. Soaring through the sky in IV as Stan Bush's "The Touch" plays is unmatched by any game before or since. I was bummed to not play as my Boss in Gat Out of He'll, but Kinzie fuckin' rocks.
Portal 2 - Portal came outta nowhere and knocked me on my ass, it was "you can do that?!" moments one after the other towards the end, and if you told me that a sequel would be just as good I wouldn't have believed you. A sequel that inflated in size and scope past the bounds of the original, at that. And yet. A narrative that fit the world and engaged me. Cool puzzles. Using achievements to make jokes in the course of play. That moment during the last boss encounter where I thought "Wait. Wait, can you oh my GOD you can", you know the moment I'm talking about. I don't remember the text in video game achievements; I remember the text in THIS video game achievement, because I thought that exact text the second before it popped up. EDIT: Forgot to say: J.K. Simmons is a treasure.
The Stanley Parable - First played it as a Half-Life 2 mod. One of the most inventive uses of the video game medium I've seen so far. I think it's a good sign for a medium when works of art in that medium start to introspect, and The Stanley Parable - while generally comprehensible to people who don't spend half their day on a video game forum - had the most impact if video game conventions are as ingrained in you as "left" and "right". What a cool game.
Which is odd, because he is excellently voice acted.
Not over acted, conveys emmotions, fits the character in that i can believe that person sounds like that.
Yet somehow i don't like Geralts voice...
Witcher 3 is weird in that, on paper, i should fucking love this game.
I have no major complaints about it other than that i find the combat somewhat fiddly and unreliable, and it has so many great things to it, interesting exploration, good writing, side quests, huge open world...
Yet somehow i can't get contact with the game. Should probably give it another go at some point.
this is the original VA, first time he's recorded the voice in 12 years
https://clips.twitch.tv/RelentlessComfortableJellyfishAMPTropPunch
I've heard good things about that game.
Dammit, I just bought that on Switch!
Haven't had time to play it yet, but the Quick Look Giant Bomb did looked really good. Looks like a really good Donkey Kong Country-style platformer, with a very interesting overworld.
Can't wait to get into it.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
There is only like 2 games on it I want to try but I also want to get it as late as possible so I may be able to snag more games for cheap.
I am shocked that Coh survived since Sacriel had a thermal scope.
starting off with my favorite genre: RACOONS WITH GUNS
Damnview: Built from Nothing (Sandbox, Simulation, Political, Raccoon)
Backbone (Dystopian, Noir, Adventure, Raccoon)
Biomutant (Open World, Action, RPG, Adventure, Fantasy, Raccoon)
Tanuki Sunset (Musical, Skateboarding, Raccoon)