Dexterryu

You're not wrong. In general both from the perspective of the existing relationships with MS and Sony AND what publishers/devs are doing with Nvidia are both anti-consumer.

I'm sorta mixed on this.... On the one hand, if a consumer has paid for the game license then they should be able to play it on whichever platform/machine they wish. I can see publishers wanting a little bit of a cut for a service making money off of the ability to play their games and I don't see that as terribly unreasonable. That said, if the service allows for their game to be played by more people (therefor more sales), then I don't see how it's really hurting them.

TWD:S&S is this way and I feel like it works fairly well. They have some motion sickness settings too which they vignette your FOV while moving. Teleporting I find to be more difficult because you usually have to teleport, recognize your new spot and turn (if necessary) to face where you want to be. All in real time while things are coming/shooting at you isn't ideal.

It's exactly why I have 2 running subs (Viveport and Xbox Game Pass PC). Both are cheap ($60/year) and get me access to a ton of games. They keep me from buying a lot of games that I think I might like and keeping me from stubbornly finishing a game just because I paid for it. It's easy to try a game and love it, just like it's easy to try a game and drop it if it's not for me.

Holy F... a 51 minute review? Not that I disagree with him, but damn.

Half Life: Alyx

In a way, I'm kinda relieved. Spring was looking fairly crazy with releases of games for me with Half Life: Alyx, Wasteland 3, Last of Us 2, Doom, and Ori.

Still my #1 overall game to this day. Love playing a named protagonist with their own personality. Great characters all around and really felt like choices mattered. I've only played through it plus the DLCs only once... I skipped gwent (I just don't dig card games). I want to say the main game + all side quests/contracts (outside of gwent) took me like 75-80 hours. 10 for Heart of Stone, and about 25 for Blood and Wine.

Really anymore with all the sales, giveaways, and games via subscriptions what I play comes down to time more than $$. I try and discard more games than anything these days... almost like reading a book. If the first chapter of a book doesn't grab me I move on. Same with games now.

It's really any time a bad guy sees you... vehicle or not. Supposedly they don't know you exist (at least to the point of the game I'm in) yet they instantly recognize you. They just start shooting.

Happened across this thread and you guys convinced me to pick it up. Got it on PC from EGS for $13. Having a good time with it. Some really good Quality of Life improvements and some things that still annoy me. I haven't really been bothered by the item level/gear score stuff. Doing side missions/intel seems to keep that afloat fairly easily. What I'm still finding annoying is the AI that seems to recognize me as a threat for no reason. Just driving down the roads and if one of their trucks come by, I'm insta-agro'd. That said, other than that, I find the combat AI to be fairly fun. It's easy to set them off on a red heron and double back & disappear or flank them. Drones are a pain, but they are supposed to be.

For me it was a couple of things... #1) The actual headset I view as temporary. There is a difference between barely acceptable (which Index far exceeds) and barely good enough. Probably a bad choice of words on my part. Several things make Index stand out to me (and I've played on Wireless Vive Pro, Oculus, etc...). The increased vertical FOV and higher refresh rate are extremely noticeable. When I go back and play my friends Vive Pro I feel like I have blinders on and am moving my head vs looking with my eyes. So I fully intend to upgrade/replace my headset at some point. That said, the headset iteration hasn't moved all that quickly, so my logic on the headset is that I'll probably have it at least a couple of years before something that is head & shoulders better becomes available. #2 is that the Base Stations and the controllers I think are a major step forward. It's not a big deal for older games that simply remap inputs, but the games that natively support them they're a game changer. Finally, regarding the price point... you really do get what you pay for and it's a decent value compared to what you're giving up by going with a less expensive headset. That said, the price point isn't that expensive for me. My debate was between the Index and the Pimax 8k or 5k+.

I hope I don't come off as a VR snob here, but I've got a Valve Index. I waited for a while to get into VR and I'll tell you that even while the Index is very good, I consider it to be barely good enough. That said if I were to recommend buying a VR, I would definitely go the PC route and going all in. It has the best library and the ability to mod. Beat Saber is a great example.. on PS4 you get like maybe 30 songs, plus about 30 more as paid DLC. On PC there are thousands.

I'd definitely have a different list... we've had a few new genre's birthed from a couple of games that didn't make the list. First there is Overwatch... gave us the hero shooter and is still super relevant Then there is PUBG... for which without it I doubt Fortnite would be what it is. Witcher 3 is still (IMHO) the definitive open world game with narrative and choices that actually effect the world & story.

General gist for me is that if there is smoke there's fire... which goes to the question of if they release games that are fun and good then do we ultimately care?

Nothing I disagree with here... especially Outer Wilds. In general I've been kinda trying to motivate myself to play Outer Worlds mostly because I have like 3 days left on my Xbox Game Pass to see if I can either finish it or if it gets good enough for me to keep my subscription alive.

I'm not sure what to make of all of this. On one hand, the announcements give it a lot of credence. On the other, if the games they ultimately release are good then we're kind of in a tough spot as consumers. If the games are good, and we want to play them and we buy them we're just encouraging this. Obviously this sounds like it's not a good place to work, but no one is making people stay at their current employers (While not a game dev specifically, I'm close enough to it to know there are TONS of opportunities). It's also interesting how much this parallels with EA and Bioware after ME:A and Anthem. Even Ubi to a certain extent. Suits are trying to push for annual cookie cutter "living game" releases and gamers are (finally) stopping from buying them. That'll get the investors to (hopefully) realize that they need to listen to the developers (who are much more close to the actual customers).

Very well said. Game is decent... tries a little too hard to be like firefly sometimes and doesn't succeed very well at it.

Some of it is that ME you are playing Shepard who isn't a voiceless silent protagonist. ME feels more natural like a conversation because you have a little more back and forth. Bethesda games (including Outer Worlds) feel much more like the NPCs monologuing at you. They speak paragraphs whereas you get to choose from some 1 sentence responses. DA:O was kinda the same but if memory serves they weren't quite as long winded. Keep in mind, a lot of this is my personal preference. I enjoy playing a game with a named player character that has their own personality. IE... I prefer being Geralt vs being the "dragonborn"

I guess what I'm saying is more the "acting"... and I don't mean the voice acting. The ME/DA characters I felt acted a certain way. They felt a little more like real characters based on the way they acted (and portrayed who they were by their choices rather than basically coming right out and saying it). For example, Leliana was devout and it showed in everything she did. Cassandra is dedicated and it was easy to see in everything she said (without her saying "I'm dedicated"). Don't get me wrong. The companions here are better than I've seen in any previous Bethesda game. They just feel more like character sketches than characters. Compare Morigan to Vicar. Morigan acts ambiguous but Vicar basically just comes out and says it. Jack is full of rage but you have to pull it out of her as to why. My opinion may definitely change as the game goes on. I'm just saying that early on the character development is being done via telling me rather than showing me.

Figured I'd chime in here... Definitely more Fallout than ME. Also definitely see the Firefly homage. I'm finding the corporate satire to be a little bit over the top and that it'd probably have been better to be more subtle and less a hammer to the face. So far I'm just off the first planet. Reading everyone's comments about the companions vs ME... I'm not sure what it is (and I'm still very early) but there was something that Bioware had in the way that they wrote the companions that made me feel much more connected to them. This game looks like it's trying to replicate this but so far hasn't pulled me in... it's like they have personalities but at the same time they don't. Both the ME and DA companions definitely seemed to have a stronger sense of show, not tell... while at the same time not being so blunt. I know that may not make much sense but it's the best way I can put words to it. Gameplay wise, I definitely like the shooting better than any of the fallout games I've played. I never really loved VATS in Fallout even though it's a kinda cool mechanic. So I like this one better since I still have to aim vs pick something with the highest percentage of doing what I wanted.

It's definitely worth the $2 for two months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate if you have an Xbox or PC.

It's still good... very similar to how you remember the gameplay just with some difficulty options in the story mode. Some of the story components were really good, some of the dialogue and characters felt a little like the dev was trying a little too hard to set a tone. That said, the story modes are definitely worth playing and good overall... especially for an indie game.

He seems to fail to realize that while all of those franchises are good games, that they are all basically the same game of open world, climb tower, clear camp, find zone boss, repeat, repeat, repeat games. Sure, they all have good graphics and solid gameplay mechanics but when you're doing the same damn thing over and over to pad out your game length that people burn out on them.

The main difference is 2015 vs 2019. The gameplay loop has been done to death by this point. I played and enjoyed Wildlands, but by the end of it I was ready for it to be over... That any of the reviews said Breakpoint is similar made me less interested until/if I feel that itch to try it again. This is one of the things that I'm really mixed on. I liked the idea of collecting intel in Wildlands and enjoyed it until the first time or two until it became a tedious exercise. For this to be much more interesting is that they needed to add some context to the intel so it wasn't just a generic series of animations and dialogue of "oh here's your next clue" or "the guy your looking for likes to hang out here" and the result being a new waypoint on your map. Give me some good clues and let me connect the dots myself vs leading me by the nose to the next fight. Maybe give me some intel to influence my tactical decisions on what loadout to bring to the fight? Just something beyond "go here next". I also completely agree here. I'd love for it to really go back to it's roots. It was a great mix of being very tactical while also being accessible. I love my RPGs but tactical shooters is not where those gameplay concepts belong. I'm glad the CEO is starting to realize that gamers want more than different skins of the same game of open world/climb towers/clear bases/find "clues" to next bad guy/level up to get skills. AC, Far Cry, Division, Ghost Recon, Watch Dogs. I have a feeling that they have a model for Single player (franchises above) and multiplayer model that is similar(Rainbow 6 / For Honor). Would it surprise anyone if Skull and Bones felt like a pirate version of Rainbow/For Honor?