Content from Last 48hrs

Remake of Star Fox 64! Time to get a Switch 2 lol.

It uses render to texture. Basically the game spawns another camera that looks out at the room through the mirror like it's a window, renders what that camera sees (at a lower resolution, and I think with lower graphics settings but am not 100% sure of that part) and then pastes it on the mirror as a texture before rendering the main view. It can't do curves like RT can, it only works on flat surfaces, but it works extremely well for those.

I don't know if this counts as a trope but I've been replaying Hitman 2 and the game has honest to god functional mirrors. And this was right before ray-tracing became really prevalent, so it doesn't kill the performance and it doesn't look like a blurry mess because of DLSS because the game supports neither of those things. As far as I can tell, they don't use the old trick of rendering the room a second time, either. And by functional I don't just mean clear, visible reflections. If you pull out a gun while standing behind an NPC, they'll spot you in the reflection and react accordingly. It's just one of those things that games stopped bothering with so long ago that I've gotten used to mirrors in games just being some kind of weird-looking blurry surfaces. So when you run into one that actually works it's a nice detail. It's the kind of attention to detail that I've come to only expect from developers like Remedy at this point. I still remember when I found a projector in Control, lifted it with telekinesis and the image it was projecting on the wall reacted accordingly and even spun around with the projector. They're small, superficial details but I always appreciate it when devs actually bother to implement them realistically.

Score! *Edit - Double score! You can get an extra discount by "completing the collection" if you already have Kaizen.

New Zachtronics Coincidence game just shadow-dropped yesterday! At least, I don't think it was announced prior to this. Like Kaizen, it doesn't look like it involves actual coding or have a physical edition, sadly. But that's still an instabuy for me!

Kingdom Come Deliverance II Holy shit, this game is a masterpiece. It feels criminal that this game isn't more popular in the mainstream. I don't know how it flew under my radar last year but if I had played it back when it came out it would have been my GOTY for 2025 easily. Yes, even over Clair Obscur. I was already a big fan of the first game even though it had a few rough edges since Warhorse had never made a game before. Even for a first time developer, the original Kingdom Come was a damn good debut. This time, however, they clearly learned from their experience making the last game because this one improved pretty much everything and feels so much better to play. Despite coming out just last year the performance is significantly smoother than the original 2018 game. The story is downright epic and I use that word in the classical sense. It took me 112 hours to finish, although part of that includes DLC since I bought the Royal Edition that came with it. Combat has been completely reworked to feel much smoother and more technical, giving you the tools to take on large groups of enemies if you're skilled enough while not making it too easy for you to do so. In addition to alchemy they've added a new blacksmithing mechanic where you can not only make weapons and armor for yourself but also start your own forge and run a business to fund your adventuring. Horse riding is better, archery is better, alchemy is better. Hell, even training your dog is better this time. It's chock full of memorable characters, lines, and moments that are going to stick with me for a good while. I honestly can't think of a lot to complain about here. Manual saves (minus exit saves) are still limited by a consumable potion, I guess, but just spend ten minutes at an alchemist's table every so often and you'll never have to worry about it. This is about as close to a 10/10 as it gets for me. This isn't merely Skyrim good. This is Witcher 3 good.