Mythologue

@MB3108 These two things are not mutually exclusive. What's there is good, but there isn't enough of it.

Of course not. That's the reason I play the God of War games. For...this.

I completed Oblivion recently, along with the dark brotherhood and thieves guild quests. I jumped to Solar Crown and enjoyed it to an extent, but I just found myself burning out too quickly on the formula.

So I tried a couple of others. Inescapable, which I just found to be a weaker, more diluted Danganronpa - type VN. I also tried LISA. It's a fun game, grim and funny in equal measure. But the combat system always opens with this obnoxiously loud explosion.

I've dropped all three of these for the time being. I'm wondering what to jump into next. Catherine? Monster Hunter? Greedfall? Pacific Drive?

Poor casting choice. She doesn't fit the vibe of the game, as far as I can tell.

I prefer reviewers to have autonomy, even when it comes to reviews I don't agree with. A better solution is to have reviewers disclose conflicts of interest, but even then, it might be a step too far.

Looks okay but I'm hoping it's not as sterile as the interface makes it appear. Fable released when RPGs were undergoing a slow modernising process. It felt nascent and original.

This looks like it could potentially be derivative. I hope that's not the case.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that I've never once seen any ML or supposed AI do anything even remotely impressive. It's a whole lot of parlour tricks, creating collages from fragments of other pieces. I think they're starting to get a reality check that the very term is no longer a flashy buzz phrase but has instead become repugnant and reviled.

Unfortunately, they've already invested in it. So they need to pretend that it's actually revolutionary and cutting edge. For example, Google summarising a search from three pages that you would otherwise just click on and load in a fraction of a second.

Fancy stuff.

I assume that people are going to be informed that their footage is being used for these purposes?

It's a phenomenal game that I find myself growing tired of. I want to return to it in the future, but it's all so very insular. I'd have placed it at the top also, but I don't actually think its influence is going to be as far reaching as I might have initially assumed, once the dust settles. It's not Elden Ring or BG3 levels of inspirational.

As an aside, Eurogamer placed Blue Prince in the number one spot. I haven't played that game and I don't know if I'm going to find the time, even halfway through the current year, but it's refreshing to see the crown going to something other than E33 for once.

I suppose the gold medal position will be reserved for the much deserved (but admittedly overtly lauded) GOTY.

One of the games I've had my eye on. I'd like to give this a go alongside Kingdom Come. A Way Out was brilliant, and I can only assume that this place is deserved.

I haven't played it yet. This year's been packed enough as is. I'm not saying it's categorically deserved, but its place makes sense. It's had some stiff competition. Last year, it may have stood a decent chance.

I believe that they probably realised, like most people do, that "AI" as it's presently employed is just a lifeless waste. I also thoroughly believe that the game exists and is celebrated in spite of "AI" rather than because of it.

I don't know if I agree with them being excluded from receiving the award. At the same time, this is still "AI." I don't really think this game needs that many awards. I loved it, but I really think enough is enough. I haven't even played Blue Prince yet, and games like Clair Obscur had mostly just removed it from the conversation.

Nothing has to win everything.

@JB_Whiting I don't think it's really an honest remark anyway. It's not inevitable. Some articles I've read recently suggest that the use of AI in the workplace is actually falling. Presumably because workers and managers, etc., are beginning to realise it's more of a problem than not.

@LifeGirl As simply as possible, we could substitute soul and experiential. I think they're both interchangeable. AI does not experience, it just mathematically breaks down.

A human experiences, through emotion, sensation, memory, etc. There are scores of definitions for "soul," but I don't think many would deviate from the abovementioned.

Gen AI is regurgitation. It's sort of like a very convincing collage, torn from other work. As far as I'm concerned, AI cannot really learn anything new from the information it is typically fed. It can only grind up, reconstitute, and return.

Far and away from Antonov pulling inspiration from his home nation of Bulgaria, for example. He applied emotion and lived experience to world building. AI cannot do that. It probably never will.

One of the many reasons why I think independent teams are more appealing. I can't imagine working like this. Sorry to everyone who are forced to work such grotesque hours.

Reanimal. That's more or less it for me. But Carmageddon could be fun. One can hope.

There are some rumours swirling that HL3 might finally be releasing, or at least seeing an announcement. I'm not counting on it, to be honest. But if it does, it might be the one game that can (and probably will) take the wind out of GTA's sails.

Clair Obscur is deserved as an innovator in its respective genre, and also as a statement on how (relatively) lower budget sleeper hits typically supercede the vacuous "AAA" big name titles. Predominantly because the devs /designers seem to actually care to create a strong game with an interesting narrative.

I would go as far as to say that, at least mechanically, Clair Obscur far surpasses Persona, which very obviously inspired it.

@GamingGod I mean...it did though?

Portal is still the peak of 3D puzzle gaming in my opinion, but The Witness is no less a pretty fascinating concept. It's good to jump between puzzles knowing that you can back out and return to others on the island if you get stuck. Also pretty cool that the game has basically zero verbal or written clues on how to solve the puzzles, and you can quite easily intuit the rules of every one.

@WolfyTn Unfortunately, the Burnout devs were sort of divided for a time, with a huge portion of staff being moved to Ghost Games, before being moved back to Criterion and working on NFS alongside serving as a sort of auxiliary team (to the best of my recollection.)

The rest of the staff moved to TFE, which is now ill fated, of course. And Burnout as an IP doesn't actually belong to the original devs who worked on it.

It's at the mercy of EA, and they seemingly have no interest in reviving the franchise. But who knows? They could pull a Konami and stun everyone with an unexpected turnaround. One would hope.

L4D was a bit of a zeitgeist franchise. It seemed to capitalise on the meteoric rise of online multi on consoles, and landed in what I'd describe as the sweet spot; between 2007 and 2012. A lot of companies were experimenting with multi and online components back then, including Irrational, Criterion, Black Box, The Behemoth, etc.

I think we're past the experimental phase now. Multi is just a given. It's become a little ugly, in fact. B4B really wasn't brilliant, and does anyone even remember Evolve?

I'm not hoping for its failure, though. I loved L4D and played it obsessively. Here's hoping for a genuine revival.

I played Dangerous Driving quite extensively. I think I put in more than 25 hours and earned the platinum trophy. I went out of my way to climb the leaderboards and complete all of the survival events, end to end.

Wreckreation was supposed to be an evolution of that, and it was to some extent (physics and weight was much improved,) but plenty was just wrong about the game. It should've been more varied, there could have been more environments, and it critically needed to show that it was a major milestone for a company trying to claw its way from low budget independent to at least AA, with a big name publisher backing them.

Unfortunately, it was just too little, too late. Somebody commented on Reddit that their patience had run out. I wanted a lot more to come from these industry vets, but Wreckreation was the unfortunate result.

I guess it is what it is. EA might be the last chance to revive Burnout, and I don't fancy those odds.

"Let it die" indeed.

The Game Adverts

Make the world smaller, not larger. BG3 became one of the richest RPGs ever, and its world, overall, is actually pretty small. Human Revolution and Mankind Divided are two further examples of small but densely packed games, which only serve to further amplify deeper RPG components.

Beyond that, I hope that TW4 isn't all that much like BG3, with respect to its mechanics. Innovation comes with original ideas, or tweaks to existing ones.

I'm loving this game so far, but, just in my opinion, the voice performances are probably the weakest aspect. It sounds a little bit stilted to me.

I'm guessing that's the £650 - £800 price point locked in, then. I'm looking forward to seeing how it does, and I'm still very much interested, but anything in excess of £700 will place it in rocky territory for me personally.

The more I've been thinking about the Gabecube, the more I'm sold on the idea. It's not necessarily the console in and of itself, since that's not a huge selling point. It's the form factor, as well as the ease of access to simply plug and play what is essentially a PC. I've never really used a PC on a proper wide-screen TV before. Being able to play a whole library of cross generation games (the original Doom, to Fable, to Dead Space, to BG3, etc.) on Steam, coupled with emulation, then accounting for other software available on PCs, typically, all has massive appeal to me.

Even if it's priced higher than the PS5, I actually think it's worth it for all of the aforementioned, as well as FOSS, free online and custom servers, esoteric and obscure games, and gaming experiences, and so on. I'd happily put a price of £550 - £600 on that. But any higher might be a reach.

I didn't even know there was a second series.

@Darude84 It doesn't really. It proves that a controversial franchise is utilising AI for art. That's the farthest thing from proving that AI surpasses human art. I would argue it's the polar opposite, in fact; a heavily criticised franchise is the most recent example of generating "art," rather than creating art.

Also, yes. It certainly is.

@Darude84 To be honest, I don't think AI "art" is really a threat to artists. AI will threaten a lot of roles, but supposed artistry is extremely noticeable when fed to a generator. Good artists will always far outperform AI, because there are scores (if not myriad) nuances that are typically noticeable.

If it's open, like a PC in general, then it has a huge amount of appeal. If I can potentially install PCSX2, Duckstation, and other emulators to the system, as well as play PS games that seem to reliably come to PC these days, as well as my whole Steam library, on top of my RS14 CDLC, and all of that on top of additional software for productivity, as well as being able to play games online without a subscription, then yes. Absolutely. The aforementioned is worth sacrificing some power for.

"We basically just don't want you to play it lol"

Rumours about the much anticipated Knack 3 are coming thick and fast. Sony can only deny it for so long before the dam bursts.

It's a good game that really feels like it toys with the idea of being better than just good, and then decides to discard it in the end, entirely in favour of safety.

It's fine, has some great mechanics, and the world is surprisingly polished. In fact, I think FO4 might be the most polished Bethesda game I've played. It's weirdly clean.

But a lot of its quirks just really let it down. Voiced protagonist was a bold move but it just didn't work. You can't be a creepy gramps if your character sounds perpetually 30. The story is fine but honestly kind of weird, and going to the institute just makes the game suddenly appear far too clean than it has any right to be.

Stuntman was pretty broken when I played. I don't know if it still is, but it was just a few months ago that I tried.

I really wasn't planning on buying this anyway. Not right away.

@Kalime78 The game has an indicator to show where to turn.

Par for the course for the increasingly grotesque games industry.

Why should we be paying for it at all? I can play all my games on Steam for free.

@Questionable_Duck Isn't GTA VI something like the eighth mainline entry?

Penumbra is one of my favourites. Difficult to get into, but I think it's fairly rewarding if you're patient with it.

But I generally don't play horror games during Halloween anyway. It's easier to play them in the right mood, and harder to force yourself into that certain mood.

Looking forward to playing it. But I've got way too much to play through right now. Just bought Wreckreation and I haven't even started it yet. Never mind E33, Oblivion Remastered, Borderlands 4, Lisa, OlliOlli World...

I'm making an assumption here, but I'm guessing that most gamers appreciate the low key touches in music, rather than the grand, sweeping orchestral scores. Josh Mancell came to embody some of these themes of nostalgia, as one such example.

But that's not the sort of music you listen to in a packed venue and before live performers. You listen to it in your bedroom or during studies or work, or on the bus, or something like that.

The sole thing I want to know about this game is, how much of it is just raw solo play? I'd love to see split screen as well, but I don't think that's very likely.

@LifeGirl To be honest, I don't think we'll even live to see AGI. It's a bubble, and a string of buzzwords. I'm just waiting for the penny to drop for others who don't yet see it as something else besides a shiny, attractive feature on some product packaging.

@JAMes-BroWWWn It can't, and probably never will.