IntrepidWombat

From a technical standpoint, it was brilliant. Great gunplay, good exploration and crafting mechanics. Graphically, it was also well-done. Everything looked fantastic. Sound and enemy design were on point.

The narrative was trying too hard. It has an edgy, pretentious, fan-fiction-quality design masquerading as an avantgarde art house flick. I like games with progression. Halting my progression to play a section that I just played as a different character is frustrating. The pacing could have benefited greatly from taking a page out of the Resident Evil 2 manual of excellence - play one perspective through one campaign, then play through the other one as a "B" scenario. Oh man, what that could have done for the narrative.

The first game built toward a sequel and formed a promise. The sequel failed miserably in the payoff. I'm glad I played it and enjoyed the gameplay aspect, but I gave it to a friend right after and have no desire to play it again.

Expedition 33 is the only one I've played so far on this list. I'm not as enthused with it as many others are. The real time dodge mechanics kick my ass.

My favorite that I've played this year is Unicorn Overlord. What an excellent game - Vanillaware improves as a studio with each title, and it's been really neat to see their progression .

The story was fine. For a game like this, gameplay is king. They delivered on the most important aspects (performance and fun factor). If they can make improvements with the sequel without sacrificing gameplay at the altar of good story telling (looking at you, FFXVI and GOW:R), it should be incredible.

@Medic_alert Same! I got bored. Beautiful game, just not for me.

1. Trails
2. In
3. The
4. Sky
5. Also maybe FFT and Gears

Jeez, all I want are remasters and a remake?

At some point, I've received Borderlands, the sequel, and the prequel with the silly name for free through some giveaway or another. So I guess the combined 30 minutes or so of enjoyment wasn't really a waste.

I randomly found Borderlands 3 for PS4 brand new at a Best Buy for $10. I was so excited that the plastic is still on it years later and my attempts to give it away have all failed.

I predict that we'll see Borderlands 4 on Amazon for $30 by the end of the year.

@rusty82 Much appreciated.

Same - I wonder if it's time to start using easy mode.

It's too hot and humid to get anything done outside today. I started Clair Obscure, and while it's gorgeous, it's in the "git gud" category of games I don't care for. After getting wiped by the same enemy four times in a row (not even a boss, just a normal enemy), I decided to go back to Soul Hackers 2. Either games are getting tougher or I'm getting too old for this.

Father's Day tomorrow. For the 7th year, I'll go to the cemetery first thing to visit my daughter and plant a day lily next to her head stone. After that, I'll get my son up before it's too hot and finish getting the front flower beds in shape.

Stay cool and have a great weekend everybody!

Run, roll, shotty!

Looking forward to playing this again.

@somnambulance I certainly could, but nobody would listen! Haha.

This is the game they choose to do it with? Sheesh. Another aggressively mediocre game from an aggressively mediocre studio, and this is the one that's going to be $80? Lol.

My son just beat Persona 3 Reload, so he's looking forward to seeing whether or not they'll announce a Persona 4 remake of some kind.

I don't really need to see more of Gears of War - I have so many hours into the original, and I'll buy a month of PS Plus when it comes out to play online a bit with my brother - which is wild to think about. Last time we played the game together on coop, his oldest was a toddler and I was a bachelor. Now he has grandchildren, and my son is about to start high school. What a mad, mad world.

@Jrs1 Hah, it's a good one, isn't it?

I bought a new TV this week. Sam's had a nutty deal on a 65" OLED - $650 (or $710ish after tax). It's the nicest display I've ever had. I'm thinking about buying a second one for the other room.

I'm just dipping in and out of games to see how they look, and it's been wild. I may continue Soul Hackers 2 or I may just go ahead and jump into Clair Obscure after today's work is done. Last night, I took a spin through some boss rush battles in Stellar Blade and a stroll through Silent Hill. Yes, I died in both. It's been a while, okay?

It's storming outside today, so my plans to clear up some rogue foliage around my property is sunk. I'll work in the garage a bit and clean the house. The master bath toilet has a broken flange, and it's been on my 'to do' list to take it off, repair it, and remount it - I just hate dealing with the old wax.

Have a great weekend everybody.

Oh man. I've been such a nerd for this franchise for 27 years. This was the second best reveal (only because the RE2 remake reveal will never be topped). I've already got my Out of Office on the calendar for this day. Here. We. Go.

Total snoozefest without RE9. That alone made it worth it.

Final Fantasy Tactics and Bloodstained are the only two I could get any kind of excited about. Maybe Pragmata? I need to see more.

Different on the US store - per Gematsu and the SquareEnix site, the game comes with the bundle. It also looks to be sold out unfortunately.

I tried Settlements and was disappointed by the mobile-game-like waiting. Why does this upgrade take two hours? That's a good way to make me shelve the game for 6 months. If they've fixed that though, I'm in.

Resident Evil IX or even the rumored Zero remake. Come on, Capcom!

Between this and Game Fest, there has to be some Resident Evil, right?

Right??

Not a lot of gaming this weekend. Drove for most of the day yesterday with my family and arrived in beautiful Kansas City for Breaking Benjamin and Staind on Sunday. This will be my teenage son's first concert, and he's excited. I brought a Switch along in case of some downtime and have Triangle Strategy on deck, but it's looking likely that it will stay in its case.

Have a fantastic weekend, everybody.

Capcom, pleeease. Resident Evil Anything-that's-not-live-service-multiplayer!

Enjoying Soul Hackers 2 a great deal. I wanted an Atlus title to help make up for the disappointment that was Metaphor, and this is it. Heading to my mother's shortly to take care of a couple things there, then back home to knock out some cleaning.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

I need at least one more opportunity to be disappointed at the lack of a Resident Evil reveal. Come on, Sony/Capcom.

Maaaan, I love this game. I remember coming home from work and finding that my father had bought me a copy after I'd mentioned it after seeing some commercials - we used to watch wrestling together twice a week. I'd just started my junior year in high school and was balancing that with my new position at the move theater. I stared at that game on the shelf for a solid week before I could tear into it, but I remembered being so thankful every time I looked. Dad was always awesome like that.

Now, if those jokers would only release this on disc, I'd be a happy buyer! Otherwise, I have my original (or emulated) copy to fall back on.

@Dominator2885 It's a good philosophy. People like X, so give them more X. PS1 era Resident Evil and SNES Final Fantasy games come to mind.

@SausageWearer Can't say I disagree. I'm at a stage in my life where I have more money to buy games than I do time to play them. As a result, I have more games now than I can hope to play.

@Ravix I could, but then we'd be me missing other context - cost of living in different regions, racial disparities, gender disparities, education, etc, etc. I understand what you're saying in that we would also need to check what percentage of income is considered disposable, but I'm trying to keep things surface level since this is a video game forum and it's not really that important.

@nessisonett If anyone is priced out, it will only be temporary for a given title provided that distribution remains varied. Prices of games drop based both on competitive pressure between retailers and with newer releases. It's damn difficult to be priced out of the hobby with an enormous number of titles available for peanuts on places like GOG that will run well on PCs that are cheaper than last gen's consoles.

Still, I don't believe wage stagnation is a good argument against the rise on prices. I'm going to us US numbers because that's where I am. Check out numbers for wherever you are. I'm using average over median because that data is more readily available.

2000:
Average Hourly Wage: $16.97 (census.gov)
Price of New Release: $49.99
Hours of work needed to buy a game: 2.9

2010:
Average Hourly Wage: $19.21
Price of New Release: $59.99
Hours of work needed to buy a game: 3.12

2020:
Average Hourly Wage: $33.36
Price of New Release: $59.99
Hours of work needed to buy a game: 1.8

2025:
Average Hourly Wage: $30.19
Price of New Release: $79.99
Hours of work needed to buy a game: 2.65

Wages have indeed stagnated and even fallen, but I would argue that game prices stagnated for even longer and what we're seeing is a market correction.

I'm really not sure. I got fed up with Metaphor this week and pulled the plug. 30+ hours in, and I'm over the way this game is designed. I don't like it.

My backlog is ridiculous. I really have no clue what to play right now. Since putting Metaphor back in its case, I must have cycled through 10 or 15 games, saving at the first opportunity, and then bailing on them. Maybe it's just a good weekend to knock out multiple projects.

Short answer: let's go with nothing.

Have a good weekend, everybody.

Horrible decision. You may be able to do that if you build good will with the audience. 2K has absolutely not done that with that franchise. Capcom could do it with Resident Evil 9. Atlus could do it with Persona 6. Borderlands 4 though? Two flopped games and a flopped film in succession just don't warrant it.

A bit of Metaphor Re:Fantazio. I'm almost 30 hours in, and I am bordering on pulling the plug. I'm underwhelmed - I don't care for the press turn system, the field combat is seriously janky, and the balancing just feels off. The story is one that's not particularly inspired, and I can't stand the protagonist. I have only continued because it's Atlus and because so many have a lot of love for it, but if the next couple of hours don't change my mind, then I think it's going up on eBay.

Have a good weekend everybody.

@twitchtvpat Oh, I'm fully aware. That's why I'm not shy about being all in on emulation.

@Frmknst New doesn't mean better nor does it mean it will suit every individual taste. There are exactly three games out this year that I care about, and there is a lot I missed in previous console generations. This has been a heavy backlog year so far, and it will continue to be.

To the wider topic at hand, I can emulate PS3 games just fine on a 6 year old office computer with a workstation graphics card using software built by people doing it for free as a passion project. There's no technical reason that the PS5 couldn't play every generation of PlayStation just fine with the resources that Sony has at its disposal. It should be possible for me to put in any PlayStation disc that I own and play. Sony can't sell it to me for a third or fourth time if I could do that...

I've never liked GTA, so my main take away is that today I learned that sceptic is the proper British English spelling of skeptic. How neat.

A game from 2013 is ancient now. I need to sit down.

GungHo completely bungled the release of Lunar Remastered. Looks like there's still only scalped copies on Amazon. Hopefully this is smoother. I'm still hoping for PS5 releases of Zero and Azure based on the PC versions!

Ick, LRG. I will grab something if they are the only way to get a physical copy of something that I want (Persona 4 Golden for example), but this is nuts.

@Neither_scene A cinematic 24FPS it is. Lol.

$40 for just the first one...sheesh. The inclusion of multi-player though, I think that's going to be enough to drag me back in. I haven't really been into a console multiplayer game since Mass Effect 3, so this will be fun to hop back into. My brother and I played through the first game together in co-op. Let's see if our almost 20 years older selves still got it.

@Keyblade-Dan There's dozens of us!

Nothing that involves a screen! Out of town with my wife for our anniversary, and so far we've done an escape room, she's kicked my tail three times at Boggle, and I sank all her battleships. We'll see what's on the menu tonight before driving home tomorrow.

@Oram77 Haha, nice. Power to you!

@Oram77 How in the world have you been able to put 80 hours into a game in 5 days? That's wild!

Just waiting on my copy to arrive at this point. I'm playing Metaphor right now. I like it, but I don't love it.

I'm slightly concerned that the QTEs will be a turn off. We'll have to see.

I put so many hours into so many playthroughs of the original that I'm not sure I would pay more than the $7.99 or so that it will be in a couple years. I'm eager to see if reviews can change my mind though. If it has Shivering Isles and some horse armor (hahaha) from the jump, that'd make it a much better value proposition.

Decided yesterday that it would be a good idea to just go ahead and order my copy of Expedition 33 since it's out next week - estimated arrival date of May 19th? Holy smokes. I'll hunt for a copy in town in the meantime.

I decided to start Metaphor Refantazio. It's... fine. It's okay. I'll give it some more time. I also finally ordered Romancing Saga 2 - I adored the demo for that one. If Metaphor hasn't completely grabbed me by then, I'll switch to that.

Beyond all of that, I'm putting together an inexpensive PC for my mother to use since her last one gave up the ghost. Got a good deal on a used bare bones Optiplex. A few new parts, a few parts I have laying around, and she will have a perfectly serviceable web browser.

The old pool is finally coming down. If weather doesn't stop me, I'm going to finish cleaning out the muck that accumulated on the bottom and tear it completely down. I'm thinking I'd like a patio with a gazebo or something in its place.

Happy Easter everybody, and have a great weekend.

@Fishysensei Tekken: Dark Resurrection was on PSP, yes. It was the stripped down version. Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection was a port of the upgraded arcade version.

The series peaked with Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection on PS3. It's fighting game perfection.