Postal, Grim Legends 1/2, and Forgotten places: regained castle. Forgotten places got a bug where I cannot advance further, but at least I tried playing it.
Playing Yakuza 0. Just finished playing Beyond Good and Evil not long ago. Both are excellent IMO, although the latter’s camera is kind of horrible at times. Yakuza 0 is not as bad but definitely not designed for a mouse (I think both are more for controllers than mouse and keyboard).
Just finished Deus Ex Mankind Divided pretty recently. My initial posts about the game were highly positive.
This is not the case.
Truth be told, this game bored me. It’s incredibly padded and makes no real progress over its story, and its flaws vastly outweigh its positive points by the end.
Some basic things that are worth acknowledging:
- Yes, just like Human Revolution, it’s a jank-em-up where you’re free to charge in, hack doors, or crawl through conveniently placed vents to your heart’s content. Returning augments like glass shield cloaking and reflex takedowns make for top tier sneaking nonsense while new experimental augments like the nanoblade arms and rhino armor mean aggressive players will find a lot more to love about augmentations this time around. It went from cover shooter to BioShock over a single entry. That’s not to say stealth players don’t have some new toys, as the PEPS and TESLA are now available as augmentations alongside some very useful new gadgets, like the Icarus Dash.
- The game strikes a perfect balance between risk-reward and giving you that “nah, give me both” option if you’re so inclined. You are often rewarded for approaching a situation that seems like a binary choice and rushing to do both. Granted, not all the time… but definitely the case a good amount of the time, and it’s pretty obvious when this isn’t the case. I hope Otar doesn’t mind that I borrowed his stabilizer after shooting him
- AT THE BEGINNING, you really do feel like your choices are having an impact on the world, and the freedom is totally there. A story character by the name of Otar took a few shotgun shells to the chest early on when he tried to make me an offer I wasn’t supposed to refuse, and he stayed dead… for a while.
- The story is really cool! Without spoiling Human Revolution, it’s this nasty, corrupted version of the future where the events of HR have torn apart what good you saw in the world of the last game. The gold color scheme is gone, the Augs and Naturals despise and fear one another, and Prague-- mentioned previously as a progressive nation where augmented workers were moving the nation along-- has become a disaster. Areas like Golem City in particular are just… awful to look at, and yet, amazing. This is an incredible world to explore, even if it’s usually very unpleasant, and you can see the game building up to the world of DX1.
The part where I was really kind of done with this game was the point where after several hours of slowly being worn down by padding and uninteresting plot twists, I got to a point where Otar reappeared, seemingly shrugging off his fatal shotgun wounds like it never happened. This… REALLY angered me. This is something the original game on Unreal Engine got right, the one where they would trim low quality JPGs of buildings from their skyboxes just to save memory. Why is that game better at logging events than the brand new fancy one with a multi-million dollar budget?
So many other parts of this game feel “distracted,” in a sense, and very rough around the edges. Many side missions are organized in a strange way where I found myself constantly checking the Wiki to make sure I wasn’t about to abandon the mission as it didn’t update correctly. As I progressed through the campaign, more typos appeared, more subtitles appeared incorrectly with artifacting, and I even got a few line swaps here and there… it just felt very unpolished.
This is ignoring the fact that the game is a technical… something. The physics manipulation will feel immediately off if you’ve played Human Revolution; my stacks of dumpsters often acted like bouncy balls on top of one another, quickly sparking and ramming their way apart and ruining my plans of climbing up to the 5th story vent. Performance was generally terrible, and the only way to play the game without uncontrollable stuttering was to set textures to Medium-- meaning all posters on the wall and loading screen tips could have come from an early Xbox 360 game, maybe even Half-Life 2. I lost count of how many crashes I encountered, visual bugs I witnessed, and cutscenes tended to play out of a different audio device than whatever the game was playing on… that was very confusing. Loading times were also terrible, leaving me to quickload for about a minute at a time while area transitions could take anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes.
Yes, this game still carries Denuvo, too. It might have brought performance a little higher, but this game’s issues go beyond anything a simple DRM patch can fix.
Then, there’s the story. I really mean it when I say the game falls apart in its final chapters. It has no real content, and stretches the game for hours upon hours. My playtime on Steam clocked at almost double my time in Human Revolution, and yet, I feel like it went over a half of the story content that Human Revolution did. It’s almost like if Human Rev stopped after the minigun boss, or just as you leave to Hengsha. I knew from reviews that the ending was going to let me down, but I expected a cheap cliffhanger. I didn’t expect the dark void of nothingness that actually sends off Jensen.
There I was, thinking the game would end on this locale they hype up the entire game, and yes… it never happens. It’s just a pamphlet and the primary point of discussion for half of the game. There I was, expecting a Panchea-style final mission where the stakes are higher than ever, and the actual ending to the game had absolutely nothing to do with it.
This game REALLY let me down, and it did the opposite of what I’ve come to expect from sequels. In playing Human Revolution first, I was able to tolerate MORE of the game at first, before it really started to fall apart. It’s not like Mass Effect 2, where the difference was immediately jarring and hard to get over; instead, I found myself smoothly moving into the next chapter of the game, before this next chapter turned out to be extremely hollow.
I’m glad I got the game for free with some AMD hardware (not to mention it did an awful job of showing off that hardware with how badly it ran and looked), because had I paid for this game, I feel like I would have been let down. The worst part by far is the fact that the game did bomb, meaning this awful cliffhanger is (as far as we know) the end of the series for now. This is the note that Deus Ex went out on… and it’s a barely audible whimper with a slight voice crack.
Started to play God of War 2018 ( or 4th if you will ) and it’s… just amazing.I’m the first one to dismiss hyped triple A games and such but this one i must say deserves all the praise it gets. If you have a chance to ever play it - do it!
I recently picked it up myself and I couldn’t agree more. It really does set a new standard for the series imo.
downwell and lol because i hatemyself so much
Playing Path of Exile to regrind master levels. I had all the old forsaken masters max level but since GGG replaced old masters with new ones a league back i have to relevel them back to max. I’m also playing Enter the Gungeon because of the final update that added new guns,items, new bonus stage with boss, and two new gungeoneers to unlock. I totally suck at ETG but thats what makes it great. I’m not really into bullet hell games much but ETG hooked me.
Playing a little bit of Sekiro, a little bit of Grim Dawn, or a little bit of Dirt Rally 2.0 whenever i feel i have some time+drive+energy for that.
Been playing Sekiro recently. I “beat” Lady Butterfly last night and was quite happy with myself, then realized that was only one stage and was sad.
yr still only a little pup
This was literally me earlier. I’m still trying to beat stage two. Good luck too you!!
I just booted up redout yesterday. I suck, but I enjoyed it. Will have to play some more.
I’ve been hooked on Risk of Rain 2 for the past week, just finally unlocked the Deicide achievement. Man that took a while, blazing enemies are a lot harder than the original Risk of Rain
Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number. it was very hard game for me. First game has better story and easier.
Played Metaverse Keeper with YQ and it is such a cute and fun game, it is hard, but it looks so good 
Thanks a certain B.I.N.G.O giveaway, got reminded about Book of Demons. 
It’s on my Wishlist and there is a Demo! Temporary distraction from Skyrim. It’s gorgeous and simple to start - suspect I’ll get muddled when they are a lot of card choices.
Anyone else here been to the Archive of Awesome?
if the God of War franchise ever comes to PC, I can guarantee at least 1 sale of each…I stopped playing the “console consumer cycle” chase after PS3 - just sick of the planned obsolescence with modern electronics, not to mention inability to play at the best settings even when designed for a specific platform (and the almost constant, neverending lack of at least 60fps, much less 144+). Plus, consoles can’t be used for work.
So yes, would love to see God of War(s), Nathan Drake Uncharted(s), Spider-Man, and Horizon Zero Dawn get ported. I’d pay full $60 for any of them since I’ve either played them and know they are amazing, or my brother won’t shutup about them (since he owns a PS4)…and that’s saying something considering I buy one $60 title/year (2018 was Darksiders III, 2017 was Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, 2016 was XCOM 2) usually from a franchise I already know and love, will wait for sales for most other things.
What console games would you like to see ported?
all uncharteds, last God of War, last of us, horizon zero dawn, i think that’s it
and RDR 1+2 ofc
This doesn’t count as a port, but I also want to see Raven’s Wolfenstein return.
As @M00 said I’d love to play Uncharted as well… but it seems unlikely.