Mythologue

I hope that they've improved the game dramatically in terms of its control scheme.

If you're struggling to meet deadlines, you need to develop more manageable games and work easier projects. Not force something to fit. This just seems like common sense to me.

@Deadlyblack Fable's been absent for a while in terms of mainline entries, so it's a lot more exciting IMO.

@Jacko11 Probably has something to do with their previous work. Mad Max (PS4) got one game and that was that. I guess this was supposed to be a return to form.

The new hot selling point is the absence of AI. Warms the soul.

@danzoEX One of these games is about travelling through a vast vacuum, listening to endless droning of something mechanical and inorganic, desperately searching for any sign of intelligent life.

The other is a Bethesda RPG.

Meandering in Blue Prince. I solved six of the eight "major" puzzles but two of the doors are still locked. So I just solved the other "big" puzzle which involves the eight solutions, and decided that it's probably enough. Has surprisingly dense world building for a game that only involves an estate and surrounding environs. I can see why people get lost in it for hundreds of hours. Every layer gives way to another layer, it seems.

Beyond that, RDR. I never completed it before. It's a lot of fun and startlingly nostalgic (remember that the seventh gen is now coming up to its 20th anniversary).

I think we need to start establishing a floor for game quality.

@Mio_Nakashima Unless there's a cheaper or more appealing option. The Steam ecosystem, for one.

@Mio_Nakashima Most people on here are multiplat gamers, so I have my doubts.

@NonbinaryStarr I don't think it should be described as "worse" graphics. Cheaper indie titles can have magnitudes more character than shiny faux-photorealism.

They know that they can actually just not though, don't they? Why does every game have to have exorbitant production value, when the most celebrated games have historically been relatively low budget?

S&box is my currently most anticipated game this year. I'm fairly confident in declaring that it doesn't run into the hundreds of millions, if even tens.

@Fandangouk Did you just join to make this one comment?

That sounds like a kind way of saying that they also loathed this abomination.

This honestly just sounds painful to play. An absence of story in a vast RPG sparsely populated with anything interesting? If I wanted that, I'd pick one of the many MMOs that I can play for free.

It might have had me sold, but I don't know if I can stomach stories in racing games any more.

I feel like graphics is an eighth gen thing. I can't really picture where technology is going to take us with respect to further advancements. I think games look fine where they are right now. The best games released last year weren't even really visual marvels on the technical front.

An awfully homogeneous mess this is.

"I'll lay off a thousand people before I let this company die!"

• An animated villain or something

We need to have some standards on what qualifies for coverage. I don't think tentative, unproven projects should count.

Anyone remember The Day Before?

That certainly looks like a more conventional JRPG, going by the aesthetic design.

Just as an FYI in case anyone isn't aware; I don't think TESO comes with all expansions. I bought one of the editions recently, and I think you still have to purchase some content from the "crown" store or whatever it is.

@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.

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