ShreddieMercury

The crime board was less insulting to my intelligence than the entirety of Jedi Survivor.

AW2's reception might be skewed slightly by the fact that it's an unlikely sequel that lots of people thought we'd never get. But that doesn't mean it's not a bracing, original, and risky game that came along at a time when most video games don't aspire to be much more than interchangeable digital slop.

Oh I wasn't even commenting on what you said, that was just my general thought about the writing. I agree that the story itself is compelling and really interesting. But it does exhibit some of the typical shared universe/superhero issues of constantly evolving rules and a lack of stakes because nothing is real. Or it becomes real sometimes but just kidding it's not anymore.

I agree with this. AW2 is a weird case of being my favorite experience this year, but I would barely call it a game, and I doubt I'll ever replay it like I do older Remedy titles. I also don't know that I would say that the story or dialogue is particularly strong. It's mostly just the context of the gap between the first game and the sequel, and what an interesting and bold choice it was to take the series in this direction that I find so compelling.

Buy a Series S with that. If you don't want any MS stuff, just turn it into an emulation powerhouse.

It's excellent, but it's definitely more on the sim side than something like Rallisport Challenge. I play on controller, and it's pretty much necessary to play with at least some assists on to make the handling somewhat doable. The default settings are solid, so I would just advise not going with the hardcore option unless you have a wheel and are super serious about it.

Rallisport Challenge 1 and 2? Those were awesome on the original Xbox. I'm bummed that they never were made backwards compatible. The only 360 ones I remember were Dirt 2 and 3, which were developed by Codemasters, who also made this new WRC game.

So far this holiday season I've found myself consumed with EA Sports WRC. I usually swear off anything EA Sports out of principle, but I couldn't help myself since this saw a 40% discount in the winter Xbox sale. Despite having no affinity for simulation racing, I'm loving this game. I do wish it was a bit less challenging, but learning how the cars drive and finding the perfect balance between control and speed is extremely engaging. I've always loved rally games, back to Sega Rally on Saturn, and this game does one thing better than nearly any other: the stages. The variety of different rally stages here is probably the best in any game to date. All of the surfaces feel very unique to drive, and the weather effects are excellent. It's a pretty perfect recreation of what makes this sport so enthralling. That said, there seem to be pretty severe performance issues that people are experiencing, including a completely borked career mode that will crash the game when you select "continue". The only thing I've seen is some inconsistent screen tearing, but like most things released nowadays it does appear to be an unfinished product, hence the likely poor sales and early discount. It certainly doesn't help that EA just gutted the Codemasters staff shortly after acquiring them. Awesome industry! The next one on my list is Rush Rally 3 on Switch, which I've heard is fantastic as well.

How soon? I just played the demo and it's a pretty good time, but it's just a more slowly paced FPS version of Hotline Miami. Hopefully it's not that Devolver thing of having a single catchy idea and then forgetting to design a game.

This game looks rad as hell, and it's only $3.39 on Steam right now!

I would prefer video games where I don't even touch the controller because I don't like how sometimes when I press the wrong button something bad happens to my hero.

JSR remains my favorite video game, but if you didn't love it when it launched, I don't think anyone would be converted now. I still find the gameplay extremely fun, but it is very, very unique and certainly not to everyone's tastes. It's from a time when games had unique controls that were not completely homogeneous, which I miss. The soundtrack/visuals/style are really where the game excels. I'm thankful we got Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, and I enjoyed it well enough, but it's a pale imitation of SEGA's classic.

I might not understand what mid means... it's middling right? I think their games are fine but pretty overrated. I enjoyed the first Spider-Man, but not nearly as much as the Arkham games. And Ratchet is just okay, which I think means mid. But it might also be a lack of rizz on my part.

Yeah it's bad. And then it provided the template for all the other modern Insomniac games, which are also mid AF.

Awesome, a decade of garbage.

580.

I was on the IGN boards probably mid-2000's but do not remember my account name. I've been here since maybe 2011, though it was called Bad Cartridge.

All these lists are fine, but I want to specifically single out Paste putting El Paso, Elsewhere at #2. That is an absolutely abysmal game from top to bottom. Probably the most disgusted I've been at a videogame (and its general reception) in many years. If you want to talk about inflated scores and the sad state of modern games criticism, look no further.

Can't wait to drive for 15 minutes to a quest marker, move a walking pile of molasses around while I shoot guns with auto-aim and then drive back.

Perfect Dark comes closest in terms of ambition, but that's mostly because of the absurd quantity of features. There was no other shooter before Halo that took a sandbox approach to combat encounters in quite the same way. The AI routines are still impressive to this day, and make the game extremely replayable. Grenades being mapped to a trigger, and only being able to carry two weapons were significant design choices that completely upended how you approached the game. Then you have a large focus on vehicular combat that seamlessly switches between the first and third person perspectives. The cooperative AI of the marines in these vehicle sections adds another layer that helps make each encounter feel unique and impactful. On top of this you have the level design of things like "The Silent Cartographer", which blends together several set pieces within what's essentially a small open island, or "Two Betrayals", which pits two opposing enemy types against each other with you in the middle. Maybe there were games in the PC space that were doing this at the same time, but I can't recall any. Halo is often lauded for further popularizing the FPS on console, but like I said, I still don't think people appreciate just how revolutionary the game was and still is.

I own Outtrigger, and no, it's not good on controller haha. The original arcade cabinet had a trackball to control aiming. It's really only fully playable on Dreamcast with a keyboard and mouse. You can play it with a controller but you're severely constrained.

I don't think a lot of people appreciate how earth shattering the first two Halo games were. The first one is still, to this day, ahead of its time in in regard to its overall design. It also popularized the two stick control scheme on consoles that is (arguably detrimentally) still the standard. Halo 2 then provided the blueprint for online multiplayer on console, and popularized the type of cosmetic customization that eventually led to the disastrous micro-transaction bloat that we see now. Without Halo 2, there is certainly no COD4, which then threw open the floodgates and led us in many general ways to where games still are now.

Full article here: Bungie Devs Say Atmosphere Is ‘Soul-Crushing’ Amid Layoffs, Cuts, and Fear of Total Sony Takeover - IGN WWW.IGN.COM One month after a major round of layoffs impacted roughly 100 Bungie employees of 1,200, those remaining at the Destiny developer say the cuts, as well as other cost-cutting measures, came alongside an apparent scramble by studio leadership to avoid a total Sony takeover. I was there day one for Halo, which still remains one of my all-time favorite games. It's wild to see what has happened both to that franchise and its creators in the intervening twenty years as the industry moves further and further into the dystopian nightmare of service games.

This was a bizarre movie that I thought had some impressive scenes, but overall was pretty derivative and lifeless. The best part for me was the first sequence where he is waiting to execute his assassination. I sort of wished for that to be stretched into the entire film, and then I remembered that The American with George Clooney essentially has that premise. I enjoyed that one quite a bit.

For my specific tastes, 2023 wasn't an all-timer. Though it's unquestionably one of the better recent years in terms of gaming releases, 2017 was much stronger for me personally, and before that probably 2007. For me it's a toss up between RE4 and Alan Wake 2. Alan Wake 2 is so novel and ambitious that it deserves recognition, even though it's very flawed and I don't think it will really stand the test of time. The gameplay that it has is solid, but there's very little of it, and it's a little too precious with its own storytelling. Still, it's a huge swing in the landscape of big budget games, and it's certainly rewarding for fans of the first game and Remedy overall. RE4 took a perfect game and made interesting and smart additions. It's superb, but it is still RE4. It's not quite the leap that RE2 remake was, but I enjoyed my time playing it more than almost everything else. Tears of the Kingdom and Mario Wonder are both phenomenal games, but I haven't been able to really get into either. I ended up dropping off of Zelda after a few hours, and while I love the look of Mario Wonder, the 2D games just don't grab me the way that the 3D ones do. I would give an honorable mention to Robocop, just by virtue of how rarely we get games like that. That's the kind of game we were getting 3-4 times per year in the mid 2000's, and so it felt like a breath of fresh air in the modern era. Gaming is my favorite hobby, but I definitely can't keep up with these super long major releases anymore. Anything over about 20 hours starts to wear pretty thin for me, and I find myself with less and less time as I get older.