hybridial

I didn't really think about it enough to draw that conclusion, I just know that the absolute worst thing about all those games is the "narrative." They have no narrative, they have nothing I respect as a narrative. I literally give that stuff 0/10 because there is nothing to give a score to. Lore? Fuck off with your lore, lore is not fucking storytelling! Dark Souls 1 in particular I think has a worse story than Doom 1 because at least Doom 1 makes the protagonist's motivation clear, and DS doesn't even bother with that. Which is why I kinda had to rate them just on the play experience and DS1 was frustrating and uneven and at times absolute unfinished garbage. Dark Souls 2, the issue with that is it was a lot more polished and less frustrating and more even, like some major improvements I'm sure factored into the later games, but it was kind of dull without the stuff that was anger inducing. I didn't try any until Elden Ring. Which I dunno, is an open world game? I don't think the choice of doing that was an improvement. It did nothing for Zelda to me that's for sure. I didn't think the combat was much better and I was never too impressed with that. After the Leonidas Misbegotten fight I stopped playing. I beat it on my fourth try but the fight was so obnoxious and stress inducing, I went back to just hating everything about FROM's games. And the people who encourage them by mistaking overwrought difficulty with quality difficulty. Overall I just fucking miss pre BotW Zelda and Legacy of Kain. We don't get classic narrative driven action adventure games anymore, and those are a 100x the games FROM could ever make on their best day.

This choice is based purely on the game's content, though I will say with old school Doom I play them on GZDoom which obviously offer a lot of things the strict original releases did not have, but I am considering it from the best possible circumstances of me playing them. My favourite is Doom 2. Yes. I actually like the vast majority of the maps. There's a couple of duds but like all the games have parts that aren't great. I think Turbo Overkill outdoes Doom Eternal as well so I kinda feel less impressed with that game now.

I'm kinda hoping that with Hyperstrange, Apogee, New Blood, Fulqrum among others that if the worst were to happen to 3D Realms, the spirit of what they revived together would still go on. The people over at 3D Realms did a lot to promote indy gaming (Even if technically they ceased being independent when Embracer acquired them) and I will always be grateful for that.

I should have mentioned that, I forgot to. Yeah it's very good, it's an elaborate and well thought out fantasy story.

Price wise you might just want to wait. I'm okay personally paying that price for a solid retro FPS experience but it is a little high. I'm playing the game for the first time just now, I never played it on the N64 originally. The remaster is excellent, the game looks fantastic. It is weird how much it throws away from Turok 1 and 2's game design. Which is both a bad... but also good thing. I could see myself replaying Turok 3 because it's short and to the point in comparison to 2. With 2 I finally finished it thanks to the remaster a couple of years ago, but I don't know if I honestly would ever replay it, it's so long and labyrinthian. Honestly the original save point based experience was probably well above even the likes of Hexen in terms of progression frustration. Turok 3's level design is fine, I think it's getting better as it goes along, I'm over halfway into the third of five chapters. It is super linear, but, in practice it's not too different an experience from say Quake 2. I don't think it's trying to be Half Life, Half Life's thing was no cut scenes. But I think it could be compared to Quake 2 only it tries for a story.

I think I'll leave supporting acts out of this unless they were major (i.e. I already knew them or I became a fan of them) Nightwish Within Temptation Lacuna Coil Kamelot Sonata Arctica Epica Eluveitie Scar Symmetry Bloodbound Alestorm Sabaton Therion Opeth Omnium Gatherum Dark Tranquillity Amorphis Draconian Swallow the Sun Persefone Ne Obliviscaris

Well, it's somewhat known here I think Devilman is one of the best pieces of media ever created, though it's more the original manga. The OAVs were essentially my introduction to anime (no wonder I became so hard to please) but they only partially adapt the manga. They are excellent though and Devilman vs Sirene in the second OVA is the best fight in the history of animation. I definitely suggest reading the manga. But speaking of other Devilman based animes, hmm. I think Crybaby is maybe best not to recommend. I didn't hate it, I mostly thought it was acceptable, but at the same time it definitely gets some things wrong. So I think Devilman Lady would be a better choice. It's just a different story entirely from its source, and it's a fascinating, different take on the Devilman concept. I've also been working on a prose adaptation of it for the last few years; something I probably won't do for anything else, given I plan to move onto original premises once I'm done with it. Other than that, some ones I think are solid: Monster Master Keaton Black Lagoon Witch Hunter Robin Speed Grapher Noir Le Chevalier D'eon Rune Soldier Slayers Record of Lodoss War Full Metal Panic! Irresponsible Captain Tylor Mars Daybreak 009-1

I just finished a full run of Mass Effect Legendary Edition. ME3 felt like a whole different beast compared to the time I originally played it; which was without an imported save. That was because I did ME1 and ME2 on the 360 but ME3 on PC, my 360 broke before then. Now with everything as it should be and all the DLC (ME3 definitely had the best DLC by far of the series), this was an amazing experience, maybe the peak of videogames for me. I love the setting, the characters are brilliant, there is a lot of great, snappy dialogue, the cast is loveable, and the gameplay is pretty solid. Little ropey in 1 but by 3 it's slick and exciting. The ending is what it is but even back then I wasn't particularly bothered by the three colours and I'm not now. I would call the endings as they are a formality. Everything that matters in these games happens before the ending. And having done that I'm currently working on replaying Hedon Bloodrite and playing Ion Fury: Aftershock.

You know, I don't hate Bioshock, I do agree that it's no System Shock 2. But I do want to point out it still looks like a fucking masterpiece compared to Bioshock Infinite. Especially when it comes to being "mean-spirited", Bioshock looks like Mr Rogers compared to fucking Bioshock Infinite. But I don't think Infinite is that broadly well liked, it has it's fans (why?) but for this topic it's maybe not universally liked enough to be my pick. Just because I've not been here for a while, I just wanna quickly mention my views on some other games that have been brought up, because in recent months I've played them. Elden Ring - Obviously not got a history of liking these games, Elden Ring seemed okayish. When I fought and beat Leonidas Misbegotten though, I mean I did it on my fourth attempt, but it was such an obnoxious, morale busting fight that I genuinely felt like I was too old to deal with the stress of these types of games. I might just be at the age where I don't give a shit about challenge anymore especially when it's this forced. I mean it wasn't too much for my skill, but it was too much for my enjoyment. I kinda can't judge the whole game but it made me more sure these sorts of games are not for me. Cyberpunk 2077 - well it took over a year but the game is quite playable on the Series X now, doesn't drop to single digit fps anymore. The state the game was released in is something that should probably always be held over this game. That said... I was proven wrong. Whilst in a way I wish the game was more RPG, I cannot deny that CD Projekt Red put a lot of heart and soul into this game. What it is, is actually the best Bethesda game ever made. It follows that design philosophy for the most part only the content is really good and worth experiencing, the polar opposite I guess of Starfield. Baldur's Gate 3 - Actually I've only played a little bit of it on PC. I feel it's not idea as my PC is just a bit under the requirements, I plan to get it on Xbox. I will say I intend to go into it with an open mind despite not liking the Original Sin games very much. I see a lot of stuff said about the game, new paradigm for CRPGs etc. We'll see, I kinda wonder if that talk comes from people who never played the genre because it wasn't cinematic enough for them. Now I think the one game I'll mention in relation to the topic is Alien Isolation. I don't understand why so many seem to like that game, it is outright incompetent in everything it's trying to do. I guess I should acknowledge the exception to that are the visuals and environment design, the presentation. But that's it and that gets nowhere close to making up for how bad the play experience is bungled. It's just fucking terrible and empty and the story is as completely redundant as Aliens Colonial Marines' story. I'm not even convinced Colonial Marines is a worse game, at least it's probably much better paced. But I'm not gonna get into an argument over that game as it didn't end well last time.

This. So this. Every time I watched that movie I come out even closer to the position that it might be the best directed horror movie ever made. And that is even including the forced reshoots that cause some issues with the movie, but even those I think helped the movie more than they hindered it. And I think George C. Scott, Jason Miller and Brad Dourif all gave fucking amazing performances. I also won't spoil it, I say watch this movie. Probably better if you've watched the first Exorcist (and really if you're into horror movies even slightly you probably have seen it) but it's not quite mandatory. I generally do prefer understated moments of terror, so otherwise, I like this one a lot

I feel the exact term "Artificial difficulty" can have a clear and concise meaning in game design, but it mostly applies to differences between challenge levels. I feel it's fair to say that when a game's hard mode is exactly the same as it's normal mode, with the only changes being to stats, like enemy health and damage, that is artificial difficulty. No extra work was used to make the hard mode more challenging beyond fiddling with some numbers. I would say it applies in situations where a lack of effort to create the challenge exists and only workarounds are used.

Most likely, I will correct what I said, Bethesda probably weren't directly involved, it seems more of a Microsoft/Zenimax mandated project. So a different group of people are to blame for the mismanagement but the entire thing was a shitshow. It's not a good idea to hand a multiplayer looter shooter to a dev who specialised in making immersive sims.

What happened there was Bethesda mandated the developer make the game, Bethesda never had any clear vision for the game, the developers hated working on it and had no idea what they were doing, and as a result 3/4s of the staff left. I do think the people at Volition who made the new Saints Row however didn't seem to understand their audience, which does suggest perhaps most of the people who worked on the series previously weren't there any more.

I wanna say you might be confusing Dark Descent for Fireteam Elite, as the latter is a co-op game, Dark Descent is a single player strategy game which I would call a Dungeon crawler, and it has Xcom inspired unit and campaign progression. I've not tried Alien Swarm but based on what I've read about it I would say they're different types of games.

I'm still playing Shadow Gambit, which has quite a lot of content to it. I started Aliens Dark Descent, and got through the first proper full level, Dead Hills. I really like it, it captures the essence of the movie as an interactive experience, and is a fine alternative take on the concept of survival horror. Symphony of War also got it's DLC and I'm also replaying that. I'm still very impressed by how good it is in every way for the developer's first game, and the fact it's built on RPGmaker.