Hard to pick just three, but I'll go with the following today:
Final Fantasy VI
There's a roughly 4 hour stretch in this game of tension-despair-catharsis that absolutely blew my mind. I'm still trying to chase that feeling playing video games almost 30 years later. Plenty to like about the rest of the game, too.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
One of those very rare games that clicked for me in every single aspect of the game: script, plot, visuals, gameplay, music and more. Going to revisit this one soon with the next-gen update.
Freespace 2
The one that's likely aged the most poorly out of the three, but once upon a time this game was unrivaled in making you feel like you were in the thick of a slugfest flying around in a fighter craft. Surprisingly interesting setting and story, too. I keep hoping we get more like this some day.
It's tempting, but I know it would be too much of a time suck. Especially pre-Planes of Power era, after which time spent traveling drops dramatically.
I can't imagine anyone unfamiliar with the game dropping into one of these fan servers, though. Bit of a reputation for not everyone being the nicest people, especially towards new players.
The last gen of GPUs was real bad on price, but it's gotten better. I'm still paying a little more for my PC parts than I would a current gen console, but I always more than make up for it with lower prices on games and accessories, no online access fees, etc.
My concern with PC gaming right now is that it's starting to look like a midrange PC won't get you 60fps anymore, and sub-60 is generally a dealbreaker for me. Maybe it would have been easier if I'd grown up during the fifth console gen when 15fps was common, but 60 was the standard for my consoles for years.
This year it was like every other big PC release was Crysis, and now I gotta wait until my PC is a gen ahead to run them how I want. At least that keeps me on the patient gamer path?
I don't like 3D platforming. I haven't liked it since it really kicked off in 1996. Even all these years later with Super Mario Odyssey, I feel like I'm constantly fiddling with the camera, and something in my brain struggles with judging distances in 3D space at times. I used to love platforming. Yoshi's Island is one of my all-time favorite games.
If I were in a bubble, I'd say the camera and the floaty controls that are in a lot of these games need an overhaul, but Mario's as popular as ever. Between that and Mario games still being at the top of metascores, it's probably only me and five other people grumpy about it.
I'm on a continuing multiplayer campaign in Baldur's Gate 3 and I'm also playing Atelier Totori.
It's amazing how much new stuff I'm still seeing in BG3, and I've gotta be in hour 350 or something like that. I'm playing with a long-time video gaming partner and I'm just letting her run with it because I've already played through the game.
I really started to get into Atelier Totori once it started rolling, but I'm beginning to run out of steam. I'm really missing some of the UI/UX improvements that were in Atelier Rorona DX, and I also feel like the combat isn't quite as sharp for some reason. I'm genuinely interested in the story at this point, however. If it wasn't for that, I probably would have just jumped to Meruru.
When I got my PSX in 1997, the games sure felt like a good deal at $50 after paying $70+ for cartridges for years. I only got one new game per year at full price for my SNES. I also generally felt happier buying on PC because new games were also less than consoles for a while.
Now with the indie scene, there is a lot more variance, even though I also occasionally grab top-shelf releases. I still think FTL might have been the best $10 I've ever spent on a game. At the same time, I paid $60 for Persona 5 Royal right at launch even though I had played the original game, and I still thought it was incredible value.
Yes and no. My second play had countless new characters--three of them playable--several new zones, and a ton of new gameplay. I was constantly finding new places, new encounters, new conversations. I know there are still several zones I haven't poked around in.
The main story beats don't change much but there are still a lot of branching paths to get to them. Hell, you could even completely skip the goblin camp if you wanted.
Game studios just don't do the kind of extra work to cover player choice like Larian did here. It's why the game made waves in the industry. I'd say unless you really went over it with a fine comb the first time around (125 hours or more), it's absolutely worth revisiting at some point.
I like Disco Elysium. I like BG3. They are much better narrative RPGs. I also feel absolutely no desire to go back and replay them.
Really? This is crazy to me. I get Disco, but outside of intentionally regenerative games (such as roguelikes/lites), I don't think I've had my hands on a more replayable game than BG3 in years. There's so much you don't see in a given playthrough.
The best time I had in Warcraft was forming a new guild that had splintered off of an existing one (leadership was unpleasant). It was pretty scary at first, not knowing how it was going to turn out, but we had enough of the guild come with us that we managed top 50 raid progression on the realm the following year. It was super validating to have that kind of success in a casual raiding guild after all the turmoil.
I stayed in contact with our GM, and she and I still play on and off (we're playing Baldur's Gate 3 lately).
lemmynsfw also banned CNC and is hostile to the drawn/animated side of the medium, which, if Pornhub's numbers are anything to go by, is going to cut your participation big time. People love hentai and kink.
lemmynsfw's admins never seemed to get that running a successful porn site means hosting content that might turn you off personally and trusting your mods to handle content control in categories unfamiliar to you.
Not surprising at all to me that a bunch of reposts and sex work ads what they were left with.
While four hours would be fast for a new player, 1-10 is very doable in one sitting for those familiar with the game. Early levels are fast; the bulk of those 30 days are later levels. The 50's in particular are a slog.
I doubt it is overall, but I've certainly seen more talk about it lately than I ever have. Not surprising considering how many reddit refugees I've been chatting with.
I started on kbin myself. It was mostly a population consideration, though I did like the downvote accounting. Community moderation is one thing Tildes does right, and that was a step in that direction.
I ultimately bailed when even the big magazines weren't being moderated anymore (spam everywhere).
It is, and it doesn't, but one of the important functions of journalism is a public accounting of details such as these and engendering conversation thereof.
Since you've played P4, Persona Q might be a good on-ramp into Etrian Odyssey. It's essentially EO's gameplay with personas, characters and skills/spells from P3 and P4. Q2 has the P5 characters as well but only the Japanese voices (which is why I never got around to it).
Whichever contributes the most to anti-competitive corporate culture. Most problems at the end-user level can be solved by having sufficient competition (and some labor problems, too).
Unfortunately, there are plenty to choose from.
There's Microsoft's "embrace, extend, and extinguish" strategy. Comcast's creation of artificial legal barriers to competition by lobbying state and local lawmakers. And then there's Amazon doing it by sheer hard power to put competitors under (plus all their anti-union crap).
So this is a de facto price increase? From a manufacturer that just reported a record high annual profit? 175GB (the slightly increased storage) hasn't been worth $50 in years.
This generation sucks. I was already annoyed that we probably weren't going to see price drops with this or the Switch, but I certainly didn't see a price increase for an unproven hardware revision coming.
Hard to pick just three, but I'll go with the following today:
There's a roughly 4 hour stretch in this game of tension-despair-catharsis that absolutely blew my mind. I'm still trying to chase that feeling playing video games almost 30 years later. Plenty to like about the rest of the game, too.
One of those very rare games that clicked for me in every single aspect of the game: script, plot, visuals, gameplay, music and more. Going to revisit this one soon with the next-gen update.
The one that's likely aged the most poorly out of the three, but once upon a time this game was unrivaled in making you feel like you were in the thick of a slugfest flying around in a fighter craft. Surprisingly interesting setting and story, too. I keep hoping we get more like this some day.