crispy4000

Orcs Must Die 3 next week on Epic.

78 Why are we closing bank accounts again?

That (first?) temple boss is no joke. Really nice to see you can't just cheese through the game by doing most of the side quests.

Kinda? They had things to criticize, but no cohesive argument about what a game's 'soul' is and why this lacks it. Which is what that criticism invites. It's still not a good sign. These reviews in general remind me of Yooka-Laylee's. Reviewers had a hard time pinpointing what made it worse than Banjo, so they often resorted to that line to get the point across. Or the even lazier criticism of 3d platformers never being that good to begin with.

The RPGamer one I read first basically said that its fine? … but had no soul.

Man the reviews on this have been so harsh. I'm not the biggest fan of this series, only having played a bit of the first. But still, I hope its still an enjoyable time.

The final battle gauntlet you unlock in the Gold Saucer is absurd. Definitely an endgame activity. And here I was thinking I'd 100% all the quests before the end.

Taking my sweet time sidequesting in Chapter 12. Deciding whether I want to do all the hard mode stuff in the Gold Saucer, but I'll do the chocobo racing questline as a minimum.

Devs and publishers would generally value PC and Switch ports ahead of Series consoles. Larger install bases, and there's still very much a culture of buying all the things there. Plus Microsoft is known to pay for ports to happen to sustain Games Pass. Perhaps that doesn't help the little guy as much now with the supposed low-balling, but the Segas of the world are probably loving it.

78 same as last time.

I'll buy 1-3 new games each year. Basically, the stuff I couldn't wait to play that likely wouldn't drop relatively fast after release. From there, it's a spiral of what I'm willing to pay vs what I have in my backlog. If it's easy enough to wait for a price cut from $70 to $40, how much easier would it be waiting to $30, $20, $10? $5 used to be my lower threshold, but few AAA games get there anymore outside of some crazy limited deals I look out for (ie: got Tales of Arise and Gears 5 for that). Being in Humble Choice has become my lower barometer, since that’s $12 or less. But there are some rare games I'd spring for at $20-30 around Black Friday. Stuff like Returnal and Jedi Survivor. I would say more Nintendo games, but they’re too stingy nowadays. Indie games I buy more of, but almost exclusively within bundles or with acquired credit.

Also ToTK and all the building shenanigans.

Lisa Definitive Edition and Industria on EGS next week

Pabst Blue Ribbon and e-cig skins next.

Depends, I’d say. There’s certainly genres I don’t have much experience with to properly judge, like sim racing, modern sports games, F2P multiplayer, card battlers, 4x strategy, etc. There is value in hearing about games from the perspective of someone who is more inundated in a particular genre than you. Even in genres I love like Metroidvanias, there’s some youtubers who are voracious consumers of them. I think this list is interesting, from someone who makes map guides for them, even though I disagree with some of it: https://www.demajen.co.uk/tierlist.html It gives me a general list of some ones to watch out for on sales or not ignore in my backlog.

In fairness, I think those left still do pull together good reviews. ‘Talent’ applies more to the on air personality end of things.

Plenty going back to good old Mecha Hitler in Wolfenstein 3D. But I'll post an obvious one from a game high on the list:

Did the same, but got another 4 games because why not for $3.

That’s more of a modern trend. And some do, some still don’t. But it totally checks out why when that choice is made.

Depends on what you’re looking for. Getting the “S” right is important for multiplayer, but FPS bosses are really hard to get right IMO. You can have the best shooting mechanics around, but still have the big encounters boil down to a simple deathmatch, a circle strafe war of attrition, or peekaboo firing explosive rounds from behind walls/cover. It often feels hollow compared to playing other human beings. The Prime games largely avoided that by making bosses more about positioning than keeping your cursor on the target and/or running behind things. I found that refreshing at the time, still do.

Call me crazy, but the Metroid Prime games are better than most of these. But “First Person Adventure” lock on aiming and all that.

FF6 and earlier didn't really have them, at least not in the sense FF7 did. I can't remember any in FF13.

This is also one of the smart things it does. You don't have to scour every nook and cranny of the world for loot. Just find the 2 or 3 chests in the area the game flags as you walk into it, and you'll be good. There might also be breakable crates with moogle medals, but those also tend to be restricted to cache locations and the towers. And by not showing you cache locations with the towers, you still feel like you discovered something all on your own. I don't like the mechanic of finding items randomly on chocobos though. Could have done without it, but its neat that wildlife ends up being a marker.

I feel the opposite. If it didn’t respect your time, there would be a ton more enemies around the open world. The tasks you find there, outside of mini-games, would take much longer. They wouldn’t give you Chocobos so soon in each zone. They would have kept the same convoluted weapon skill tree timesink from Remake. By open world standards, or even RPGs in general, I find it’s pretty breezy feeling on the whole, even for its length. There is some slow walk and talk moments, but not so much that it bothered me. It’s odd that they let you run faster when you’re going away from those scenes, but I actually think it works out better that way. You’re funneled, but not to the point where you feel like it’s punishment to step away for a moment. I’m not at the end yet, made it back to Nibelheim. But at this point, I’ve got zero complaints about Queens Blood or any other box checking activity. It’s all either painless or fun enough in it’s own accord. Even the item crafting stuff is really marginal, which is probably for the better. Maybe it’s not a flawless model of how to handle progression in these types of games (Xenoblade Future Redeemed takes that cake, IMO). But compared to say, ToTK, it’s much less daunting feeling, and that’s refreshing.

Remake was worse about padding IMO. Partly because the open world makes most of Rebirth optional. And there’s much less shuffling around in tight spaces to hide loading screens. It does expand on the original a lot, but it feels more like an expansion than filler much of the time.