Coelacanth

I never heard of it back in the day, but I did see it suggested on GOG when I looked at Desperados. I might consider grabbing it the next time it’s really cheap if it’s really that good. Better than Desperados/Commandos you reckon?

some of the most beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds I’ve ever seen in an isometric game.

The old isometric games have really aged so gracefully. Desperados looks absolutely fantastic still imo and Baldur’s Gate 2 also has some fantastic isometric art (sprites not so much). I bet they’d look even better on a good CRT, too.

Yeah that’s kinda unavoidable I think unless you play in true release order. I’ve heard people say the same warning as a reason not to start with 0.

Did you start with Kiwami or with the OG non-remastered Yakuza 1? I’ve heard people suggesting both.

I bought the whole collection on GOG when it was something like 80% off in 2023 I think. Still haven’t started. I hope it’s as good as people say. I know many people start with 0 but I think I’ll start with Kiwami for the close-to-release-order experience. Will probably start it sometime this year.

I finished Pathfinder: Kingmaker after putting 250 or so hours into it and now I feel kind of empty. I still don’t think it’s a particularly great game, but after spending so much time on it you develop a sort of Stockholm syndrome. There are things about the game I enjoyed, but also endless frustrations. The ending chapters especially were an absolutely insane slog of numerous terrible Wild Hunt encounters that seem completely mindlessly thrown together to up the “challenge”. It’s a shame, really because there is a good game in there somewhere if you’d only scale back the bullshit. It could also do with some editing in general, I don’t think it justifies being so goddamn long.

Looking for the next thing to fill the void has been a bit of a challenge, I’ve been at it with Kingmaker for so long it’s been tough to switch focus suddenly. I started Weird West, which I bought on the last GOG sale and the beginning of it seemed alright, not sure if it will stick though. I also played through the first couple of levels of Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive which is an absolute classic that I never played back in the day. The AI is pretty dumb, but immersion breaking stupidity aside it’s still super fun to approach it as a puzzle and work around and abuse the dumb AI.

Still, my brain might still be in the CRPG frame of mind after two months of Kingmaker so I also installed Arcanum with the Multiverse Edition modpack. Perhaps this is the time I finally play through it.

Happiness and peace of mind.

Civ V will do me plenty for another couple years anyway.

I feel like how big I want the game to be is a weird quantum unstable value. When I’m interested in the game I want it to keep going. But at some point I lose interest, and I want it to wrap up. But usually I don’t want to skip content that’s at least okay, especially if it affects endings and other choices.

I’m kind of at this spot right now with Pathfinder: Kingmaker. If I had realised it was a 200h+ game I might not have undertaken it. I’ve had a good time with it all things considered, but at this point I really kind of want to move on to the next game in my backlog.

I’m about 160 hours into Pathfinder: Kingmaker and I can’t say for certain if it’s a good game or not. It’s certainly captured my obsessive attention, and there are parts of it that I really enjoy. However, the game is also frustrating and messy and the two halves of CRPG on one side and kingdom management sim on the other *really" don’t mesh well. It’s also a complete nightmare for any completionist with the huge amount of timed quests, many of which never announce their timer publicly. The encounter design also doesn’t feel great and the difficulty is often unfun - though there are some menu settings that can mitigate some of that.

The writing also feels very hit-and-miss.

I relate to a lot of what you’re writing - almost all of it in fact. Though my birthday is in the middle of the summer so my “feeling like shit due to being reminded of the passage of time” is evenly spaced throughout the year. In a way it would be nice to get them both out of the way around new year’s like this.

I don’t have any helpful words. I’m also just drifting between distractions as I wait for either the courage to end it or death to find me of its own accord. And I relate to the guilt of knowing I have it “easy” really, and can’t manage even given this favourable hand. I’m not going to say that it gets better, because I’ve never experienced that. All you can do is try to find solace in the fact that none of it matters, we’re all insignificant and ultimately fated to be dust, dispersed and forgotten. So the rat race doesn’t matter, and whether you make it within its confines or fail doesn’t matter. There is some hope to be had in that thought, though I often fail to hold on to it myself.

Also, it might be cheesy but who cares. Sometimes when I feel like shit this song makes me feel a little better. It is somewhat comforting to know that you’re not alone, and I hope I managed to convey at least that.

I haven’t played myself in about a month since it’s been the holiday period, but it looks to be in a bit of a lurch. Many streamers jumped ship to Marvel Rivals (at least for the moment). Marvel Rivals is also an inherently more accessible game since it’s not a MOBA. I think the initial hype has died down and closed beta testing will now resume in a more normal way. I wouldn’t expect another big player surge until open beta begins - possibly even full release.

It’s been a while since I last played but the over-streamlining and continued simplification and homogenisation of the classes in combat was definitely part of the reason I stopped playing.

Casey even shows up in the dark place wearing the Max Payne tie and leather jacket! I was geeking out.

I grew up in the nineties and PC gaming certainly felt like a niche hobby then, at least where I grew up. “Normal” kids were doing sports, maybe some families had a Playstation, Dreamcast or Nintendo console in the living room. But there weren’t many others who played PC games and us who did were the nerds who got more or less bullied.

I never understood the “don’t nerf things, buff other things!” argument. Power creep is a very real issue and much more tough to deal with than players getting upset briefly.

Deadlock killer?

I haven’t played MTG in a few years (and don’t intend to come back what with the SpongeBob crossover and all) but Magic used to at least try to limit mental math in terms of changing values on cards. Buffs lasted a turn, and anything permanent was auras or equipment or +1/+1 counters.

Gwent has a lot of numbers changing value contextually, often by multiplication instead of simple addition. Now, combat math and all that is way more complex in Magic, but Gwent does have lots of changing numbers to track.

What do you mean, the Cretaceous period was just yesterday.

It came out just a couple of years ago, right?

A very appropriate release to celebrate the 10th anniversary of TW3 (my god time fucking flies). Much like the author of the article I was always surprised there weren’t any physical editions of Gwent being sold. And again like the author, I hope it’s the Witcher 3 version of Gwent being sold and not the standalone. I want to re-live my degenerate decoy/spy shenanigans.