Same. I haven’t been let down by it yet, so hearing an AI review surge makes me very sad.

I thought he beat cancer and was back to acting? He couldn’t do Sam Fisher in his prime anymore, but maybe an old Sam on his last legs? Though I guess the clock is ticking even for that.

Give us one last proper Splinter Cell send-off while Michael Ironside is still alive, you cowards. A “final job” with a retiring Sam Fisher would be an amazing setup for a game. Not that I trust Ubisoft to pull it off, mind. But we can dream.

That’s the best thing to do with Clair Obscur. Don’t even watch a trailer, just play it. I bought it full price, but liked it so much I subsequently upgraded to the Deluxe Edition just because I wanted to support the devs.

Skald was a really great, concise experience that really worked for me. If you like a bit of Cthulu-esque cosmic horror you’ll enjoy the world building I think. I finished it in about 20h I think, and it was very nicely paced. No filler or grinding, just a flowing story. Definitely an indie positive surprise hit.

There are tons more indie darlings though depending on what genre you’re looking for. Tactical Breach Wizards, Vampire Survivors and Balatro are just a couple that are all very different from the ones I already listed.

Same. I’m also interested

you get lemmy, mastodon, bluesky, threads all together

Wait, I’ve been waiting for an app like this. How does it support threaded link aggregation like Lemmy? Can you browse communities and feeds as you would any other Lemmy app, or does it display all scuffed like if you try to follow Lemmy communities on Mastodon/Misskey?

What type of game are you looking for?

Just yesterday I played through GRIS, which was an absolutely amazing experience (though short). An interactive artwork of a journey through grief. Definitely recommend it as a short in-between game. The same developers released Neva last year, which was also very well reviewed.

Before that I played Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree, which is a Soulslike Metroidvania with a PoE style skill tree. Really liked that one, the story was so-so but it has really good gameplay and super fun character customization. Good exploration, lots of secrets and i enjoyed the world as well. Looks pretty, too.

Blue Prince from earlier this year is a phenomenal game if you like escape room type puzzles. It’s an incredibly clever idea - a puzzle roguelite - and I had a great time with it. Gorgeous OST too. Definitely worth checking out, though be warned - taking hundreds of screenshots and 60+ pages of physical notes is almost required.

Earlier this year I played Skald: Against the Black Priory and I have a great amount of fondness for that game. A faux-retro RPG that pays tribute to late 80s style CRPGs it hit just right with me and ended up being my favourite RPG in a while. It’s fairly limited in scope, instead focusing on doing a few things well, and I think it really works out well for it. Beautiful music, great pixel art, great story. Also has some nice CRT emulation filters in the settings!

Which speaking of, right now I’m playing Blasphemous, which is another title with CRT emulation filters. It’s basically 2D Dark Souls but with more platforming. I have mixed feelings about the gameplay (I hate platformers) but the world building, story and lore are all immaculate and super cool.

Lastly, even though it’s in that not-quite-indie AA space you should play Claire Obscur: Expedition 33. Yes, it is actually that good, and much like when Elden Ring or BG3 released it’s kind of “required reading” to understand the zeitgeist.

But all of this is just my recent experiences off the top of my head, the list really does go on and on and on.

That it is. Might as well, right?

If you like V you might not like VI. Probably more likely to enjoy the Vox Populi mod if you want something fresh.

Sounds good, thank you! That sounds about the same as Mandragora. I think Blasphemous having clunky controls and janky detection for hitboxes and ledge grabs etc makes it a lot worse - plus some very annoying enemy placement that can lead to some very cheap feeling unfun deaths. Also there is a lot more platforming sections in it. The actual bosses haven’t been bad at all.

Is there a lot of platforming? I’m about 70% of the way through Blasphemous at the moment and that’s been by far the worst part. I’m not really a platformer guy (I’ve avoided Hollow Knight for a reason), and one thing I loved about Mandragora was how little platforming there was, and how easy the platforming that did exist was.

We’ve been in an indie game boom for a while, so you should have a pretty huge variety of amazing titles to choose from. I’ve been mixing in indies with Patient Gaming of older AAA/big name titles and having a blast.

Ooh I’m very curious to hear about Salt & Sanctuary. After just now finishing Mandragora I’ve gotten the Metroidvania/Soulslike bug and I’m on the outlook for something similar to fill the void. Right now I’m on Blasphemous but S&S is on my wishlist for the next sale along with Grime.

To be honest they kind of just gave up on the whole modern day angle, which I personally find a shame. But I agree with you, it makes no sense to have multiple endings given what the Animus is supposed to be. I mean, that’s the whole reason we were getting stuff like “Game Over: Ezio never killed civilians” earlier.

It’s been fun to follow this past year! You’ve been through some bangers, I have an equal love for the Alan Wake games and the New Vegas DLCs are some of the best in gaming imo.

It’s been a very pleasant and cozy daily routine to read, even though I admit I am more interested whenever you’re playing something new and giving your insights and first impressions.

Regardless though these posts have been a fixture of Lemmy I appreciate, so thank you for your persistence!

They had a lot of good ideas in Unity. It’s such a shame that its poor launch basically single-handedly caused Ubisoft to pivot into the RPG style AC games instead.

Even though the controls are somewhat clunky, the concept of the free run up/down in Unity is amazing, and could have ended up being truly stellar had they continued to work on it. When you get it to work in Unity and you string together a nice parkour sequence you feel like a million bucks. The animations are just the best in the series, and Paris is the best AC city they ever created (and it’s not close).

So as a Kojima sceptic, is the story/writing better or worse than you expected? Or about what you thought?

I always felt like Kojima would be unstoppable if he hired an editor and a writer he trusted, and just let those two translate the “Kojima” into the scripts. He has always had lots of amazing ideas, but I’m not sure I would call him a great writer.

I’m excited to play them! I also got them yesterday due to the impending delisting. I typically hate puzzle platformers but I’ve been assured they aren’t too bad.

I finished Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree this week, and I had an absolute blast with it. I bought it because it was written by Bloodlines-writer Brian Mitsoda, but while the story ended up being serviceable at most I really loved the gameplay. It’s very light on platforming - which I loved because I hate platforming - and the PoE inspired skill tree added a dimension to the 2.5D Soulslike that really tickled my brain just right. The Metroidvania elements were well done with lots of exploration, shortcuts and secrets and new parts of old areas opening up with each new method of traversal unlocked. Difficulty felt pretty good too, I’m starting to feel like I’m over the super difficult games and this never got too frustrating. Plus it does have accessibility options. In fact, I liked it so much I was extremely tempted to jump right back in and do NG+, and that is a rarity for me. I was thinking second playthrough first with a different playstyle, but I ended up really loving my build by the end.

Instead though I tried out Blasphemous. I got it on the summer sale at 90% off and thought it could satiate the same craving as NG+ of Mandragora. I’m about a third of the way through now though and… I’m not sure I like it. The world building is amazing and I do really love the atmosphere, story and lore. However, a lot of the gameplay design just feels annoying and unfun for the sake of it. I understand that it’s supposed to be because the theme of the game is all about the virtue of suffering but… I don’t know. My life sucks enough as it is, I don’t need to hate myself more. Also there is an enormous amount of platforming for a game with clunky controls and janky detection for hitboxes and ledge grabs and whatnot. If I knew how much platforming it had I wouldn’t have bought it, even for a dollar. We’ll see how it goes but I’m very close to shelving it as I’m not really having fun.

As a palate cleanser today I played through GRIS, which was also 90% off on the sale. While I generally hate puzzle platformers, this is more of an interactive artwork than anything and thankfully the puzzles and platforming bits were very simple and forgiving. I enjoyed it a lot, it’s an absolutely gorgeous game, a very short (couple of hours) emotional journey through grief with a fantastic score and some stunning visuals. Definitely recommend it. It’s a perfect intermission game in-between longer titles.

Any game that allows for a significant amount of visual customisation should have some sort of transmog system. Having to look like a clown for optimal stats is never a fun or enjoyable gameplay experience, while on the other hand feeling like you look awesome adds so much.