I don’t feel it in games as much, but I still haven’t found any film critic whose tastes match mine since Roger Ebert passed, so I kind of know what you’re feeling. Having that one person you trust completely is so good.

You made the correct choice.

Was about to wishlist this lightning quick, but it was apparently on my wishlist. Looks fantastic!

Probably the only thing that sort of works for me. And even that doesn’t work great, tbh.

Ye olde prisoner’s dilemma.

That is the weirdest thing I’ve seen in a while. Not sure I want to play it but I’d watch a playthrough.

I’m looking for other complex open world games that throw you into the deep end without any explanation, and are completely unforgiving when you make mistakes.
Games that even actively hate the player, but give you a deep sense of satisfaction when you finally figure it out.

So no tutorial, no quest markers, no mini-map, no quick-saving, etc.

Boy have I got a game for you. I’m playing Darkwood right now and this should tick most of your boxes. It’s not a huge open world, more like several open zones as you progress through the story, but otherwise should do what you want. It’s also not just deeply unsettling but also genuinely terrifying despite being a top-down game.

It’s weird that the only other real-time adventure game I know of (The Last Express) also came out in 97. Must have been something in the water around that time.

This game looks fascinating, and absolutely bizarre. I can’t say I have a strong desire to play it, but I would watch a playthrough of it.

This version or Waltz #2 by Elliott Smith does kill me.

Also the piano version of Smoking Section by St Vincent. The outro of desperately repeating “it’s not the end” in an attempt to convince yourself hits me just as hard as the darker lyrics of the first half of the song.

God I really want one, but I can’t really justify buying one. This review did not make me want one any less.

I mean, sort of. Yes and no. Also, this is all from second hand accounts - I played it on launch when Alife was nonexistent and had to be emergency fixed with mods to not spawn on top of you, and have been putting off a second playthrough until at least the DLC drop.

Alife is still neither as good as previous games, nor as good as what they promised in pre-release material. But they have gotten it much better, and the spawn-in garbage of the release version should be gone. I think the final hurdle is that there is a very limited bubble around the player where NPCs are actually online and active in the world as objects as opposed to simulated offline, and that is the final hurdle to truly make it feel like it should.

I recommend Cheeki Breeki’s anniversary video, it summarises the patches so far and the state of the game (though it’s a few months old now).

I honestly can’t wait to get back in the zone. I had my fun around launch with a first playthrough simply because I’m a huge fan, but the game was not in a great state then. I’ve been following the patches, and I am so looking forward to trying out all the improvements along with the new DLC. Limansk is some quintessential STALKER and those new levels look very interesting.

It’s also just like… gaming is different now and the culture is different. Games take themselves more seriously in ways they didn’t use to in say the late nineties/early aughts. There was a whimsical air to early games where you know, it wasn’t a big deal if you used cheat codes, you were just having fun by yourself at your PC. These days games are to a much further extent curated experiences that take themselves seriously and where it’s important to get the full “artistic vision”.

Also in the pre-internet times it was often a benefit to have secret stuff like cheat codes to generate buzz. I’m reusing an example from elsewhere in this thread but it was good word of mouth at the school/work place to have people spread the word about neat things like the Big Daddy car in Age of Empires or whatever. These days you could just find it with a quick search, and the magic and appeal of that kind of stuff is gone.

And again I want to pushback on the MTX angle a bit simply because we are still far from being at a stage where every game has them, even AAA games. Hell, if anything the GAAS and MTX wave seem to be abating. I would be much more on board with your argument if microtransactions were absolutely omnipresent, but we’re not there at all, even in the AAA space. And I could absolutely see a retro-themed indie single player game add some old school cheat codes, I actually think at this point it would be a pretty solid marketing trick.

I sincerely doubt that is the sole or even primary reason they existed. You cannot tell me the Big Daddy car in Age of Empires was an invaluable part of playtesting.

I mean, I don’t think so personally. Like I said, we haven’t really seen any type of throughline of cheat codes being replaced by the equivalent effect but in microtransactions. There are tons of games out there with absolutely zero microtransactions and yet still no cheat codes. If some companies were replacing cheat codes with MTX it would follow that at least some of the vast plethora of other developers that don’t use microtransactions still include fun old school style cheat codes in their games. But that isn’t the case. What is the case is that more or less no game full stop has cheat codes anymore. But what do they all have? Achievements.

I get that microtransactions suck and I do hate them too but I don’t think we can just blindly blame everything on them.

I haven’t really seen this trend like… at all. Even Assassin’s Creed style games where you can buy XP packs or certain items or whatever is not really the equivalent of old timey cheat codes.

If anything I would probably argue the introduction of online Achievements probably halted the prevalence of cheat codes.

I hate live service games and microtransactions as much as the next guy, but your assessment really doesn’t feel like it matches what I saw come out of the trailers and reveals. Or hell, even the releases so far this year. Which of the big games released this year were hat stores and/or GAAS slop? There are plenty of faults in current gaming but the live service trend does seem to be abating.

I was just about to say this would be a great post for !webrevival@lemm.ee but… yeah :/

Shame it hasn’t been revived at another instance as far as I know.

Man, I love relics of the old internet. I know it’s hard to believe for the younger generations but… this place used to be good.

Plague Tales have been high on my to-do list for like a year now since I bought them both at 80% off. Maybe I should finally get to them now.