TheMightyEthan

I didn't even hear enough of him to make a judgment.

There are a few shortcuts, but more of them would definitely help, so after going through a dangerous area you could loop back around to a save station through the shortcut without having to retrace all your steps. Having save stations farther apart does lend to a sense of danger, but it also degrades the experience if you do actually get killed. The first time I go through a dangerous area is super tense and scary, but the second time and subsequent times are just irritating, especially if I feel like I didn't get killed because of anything I did wrong.

I'm still working on Terra Invicta and Alien: Isolation, though I may be giving up on Alien. It's just too annoying how much repetition there is if the Alien gets you, and too much the Alien getting you when there's nothing you could have done to prevent it, besides just hide forever (which tbf is probably what I would do for real).

Preordered the sequel to one of the best games of the last 5 years, and also God of War: Ragnarok.

It's a chonky boy.

Welcome to the forum @Grizz791! As you can see it's not the most active place in the world, but we like it, and obviously you already get along well with everyone in the Discord.

It also holds up really well graphically. Granted, I'm playing at 4k with the Alias Isolation mod, but once you do that all the assets and everything are great, it's really only the character animations (particularly faces) that look dated.

Terra Invicta This is basically Xcom by way of Paradox grand strategy games, and it's really cool. Aliens arrive on Earth, are both covertly (and later not so covertly) trying to take over the planet, and you play as one of 7 human factions reacting to that situation. The factions range from Humanity First, who are basically ethno-nationalists, but the relevant ethnicity is just "human", through your standard Resistance, to the Protectorate, who thinks we can't win and should welcome our new alien overlords, and Exodus, who thinks we can't win and should flee to another star system. It's an interesting system, because you're really only controlling your faction, not individual nations, but you can gain control of individual nations if your faction is able to come into power there. But then another faction can take it back from you. It also means that while different factions have different goals, not all of them are mutually exclusive. So like as the Resistance my goals are actually fairly well aligned with Humanity First, other than the whole fascism thing, I'm pretty directly opposed to the Protectorate, but I couldn't give less of a shit what Exodus is doing as long as they don't try to take over any of my countries in order to do it, which creates an interesting shifting web of interactions where you may or may not be in conflict with the other factions at different times. It's not all Earth politics, you do colonize the solar system and build space fleets to fight the aliens, etc, but I haven't really gotten that far yet (I have a few mines on the Moon, Mars, and Ceres, and that's about it). It's in early access on Steam, and I really recommend it if it sounds interesting. Don't be scared off by the grand strategy aspects, I've bounced off every Paradox game I've tried but I'm really liking this one. -- Alien: Isolation Had any of you guys heard about this under-the-radar gem from 2013? It's good, apparently! I wanted to play a horror game to get in the Halloween mood, and was going to continue my yearly Dead Space gaming with DS3, but I've heard that game isn't so much horror as it is action, and I had never gotten around to Alien: Isolation, so I decided to give this a go instead. That's not strictly true, I did try it several (probably close to 10... :s) years ago, and bounced off when I ran into my first non-xenomorph enemies. This time I persevered, and I'm really liking it. It is starting to bug me that it seems like the alien is following me around specifically, rather than just sometimes I'm in the area it's in, so I'll have to see how that works out long term, but as of right now it's really cool.

Tinykin This is a Pikmin-like with a really cool art style, all the characters are 2D in a 3D environment, kind of like Paper Mario. It's kind of funny how similar to Pikmin is, right down to you being an explorer from another planet who crashes on earth and discover that everything is much much larger than you. There are really only three main differences: 1) there's no timer (that's good), 2) you're inside a house the whole time instead of outside (that's fine), and 3) there's no combat (not so good). The entire gameplay revolves around solving environmental puzzles so the insect inhabitants of this house will give you the things you need to build a ship to return to your home planet. It's really good as far as it goes, the environments are nicely designed, it's very pretty to look at, and the puzzles are engaging. I just wish there was a little bit in the way of direct opposition from enemies, I think strategically located combat encounters could have broken up the pacing a bit more in a way that would have benefited the game. Overall though the game is really good, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who's interested. It would also be fun and appropriate for kids. Grade: A

I tend to agree, they're very different things and lumping them together under the same term feels off.

I ended up letting my reservation expire, I just couldn't justify the cost with how much else I've bought lately.

This leak came from hacking though, not a team member releasing info early.

Dad of War (2018) Replaying this game in preparation for Ragnarok. It's still really good, but I do think it feels a little dated, both visually and design-wise. Played it on PS5 with the 4k60 patch, but even then I was like "man, this really looks like a PS4 game" the whole time, which is the first time that's actually stood out to me (I think largely because it's considered one of the best looking games of that gen). Anyway, still holds up, and I'm more stoked for Ragnarok than I was before this, which is what I wanted. Grade: A

I didn't either until I saw other people discussing it.

Confirmed from the Japanese (which is the English title spelled out phonetically in kana) that it is "Tears" as in crying, and not "Tears" as in rips.

Immortality This game is really good, one of the best I've played this year. The general premise is there's this actress who's disappeared for 20 years, she's come back looking exactly the same, and you're supposed to figure out what happened by looking through these clips of her movies, behind the scenes footage, etc. At first you start out with only one clip unlocked, and you get others by clicking on objects in each clip (such as a face, a prop, whatever) and it will take you to another clip where that thing appears. It can be a little fiddly at times, but it's interesting, and allows the mystery to unspool differently for everyone. The gameplay can be a little fiddly as far as where it takes you, but it works, and the real star of the show is the mystery, and the story you uncover. I can't say much that isn't a spoiler, but it's crazy and mind blowing and I recommend it to everyone. Grade: A with a (would be A+ if the linking algorithm was a little less fiddly)

Escape Academy Played this with my wife, and it was a lot of fun, especially once they added the ability to turn off splitscreen when playing online coop. Initially splitscreen was always on, but turning it off means you actually have to talk to each other to work it out instead of being able to look at the other's screen. The puzzles were exactly the right difficulty for the two of us together, often stumping us for a little while, but never for so long as to cause us to use a hint or look up a guide. Somehow they even managed to avoid causing bickering, which is impressive for a game where you're relying on another person to do things. There is a little bit of technical jankiness to it, but design-wise everything's great. Can't wait for the expansion scheduled for later this year. Grade: A

Frostpunk: The Last Autumn. Basically just another littler scenario/campaign for Frostpunk.

I'll go back to that game if/when they take the content I bought back out of the vault. No sooner.

Death Stranding Beat it again on PC through Game Pass. Still one of my favorite games of all time. So calming to play, and such an interesting setting. Grade: A+

lol, just let the story wash over you for now, everything will eventually make sense. Or if not sense, then you'll at least understand it.

Death Stranding This is one of my favorite games of all time, so of course now that it's available on Game Pass I have to play it again. I was a little worried that replaying the beginning without all my ziplines and whatnot would feel like too much of a hassle, but nope, still great.

Jurassic World Evolution 2: Dominion Biosyn DLC This was a nice expansion, mostly more of the same from the main game, but with a couple new campaign levels and a new Chaos Theory level. I enjoyed it, though it's probably not worth the full price (I played the base game through Game Pass though so I'm not too bothered by it). It does get docked a little because it introduces poachers, which are irritating to deal with, but overall if you like the base game you'll probably like this, but if you didn't then this won't change anything. Grade: B