Patient Gamers

I wanted to try out Dune for the first time and it just didn't power on. I am not ok. I took a look inside and cleaned it, but there's no obvious loose connections. Today is a sad day for me

I think I played whichever one was on my Amiga waaaay back in the day, and whichever one was on PS3 for a bit. I was also a big fan of some of the Might and Magic games, which I feel were something of a bridge between the old dungeon crawlers and something like Morrowind.

Anyway I was thinking of trying one out again. Any recommendations, maybe one with modern QOL features to ease in?

I see there's a remake of Wizardry 1(?) and remasters of the Etrian Odyssey games in the past couple years. I'm also kind of intrigued by Undernauts, which looks like it might throw a little Shin Megami Tensei flavor in?

Hey, so for some time now i had this problem... I have been buying games from both gog and steam... No drm option is good on gog but there are some festures missing from what steam has, for example being able to buy games from trading cards... What should i do? Focuse on buying games from gog and if there isnt a game then buy it on steam? Or maybe just buy games on steam?

I played 1-4 back in the day, but my memory of the details is pretty fuzzy. Something something Umbrella releases a new virus like iPhones every few years, something something, somehow Wesker returned.

Anyway, I hear 7 is kind of a soft reboot? Is that a good one to get back into the series with, and not have to know 12 games of plot?

And if 7 is good, does 8/Village follow directly from that without needing too much prior game knowledge?

Here are a few things I like about those games:

• "on rails" progression - no loot, any new gear is discovered as part of the story (e.g. OG Zelda -> blue ring -> red ring); minimal loot
• hard, but fair, boss fights
• dungeon feel - less emphasis on puzzles, more on working room to room to find items to access the boss
• minimal emphasis on stats, so grinding shouldn't be a thing of playing normally
• forced usage of gadgets/types of weapons

Examples of games that qualify:

• most Zelda titles - A Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Skyward Sword; not BotW or TotK
• Ys games - esp. Ys 1 and Ys Origin; later titles lose focus IMO (more gear, more leveling, etc)
• Okami - boss fights aren't exactly what I'm looking for, but the rest of the game is close

Examples that don't qualify:

• Diablo and similar - far too much loot and skill trees
• Dark Souls - it's close, but the variety of equipment is a bit much; I want less choice, not more,; but DS is pretty close
• Assassin's Creed - "boss fights" are usually lame, too much focus on upgrades, stealth isn't really my thing

Games on the fence:

• Tunic - I've played an hour or so and it was tons of fun
• Titan Souls - finished and loved it, just worried mentioning it will take people off track since it doesn't have any progression, dungeons, etc
• Furi - again, loved it, but like Titan Souls, it's a bit of an exception

Basically, I want a game that forces me to learn and adapt using the limited tools the game provides. Here are things I absolutely want to avoid:

• feeling of being OP - causes me to drop most (a)RPGs
• lots of choices - if I get an upgrade, it should be strictly an upgrade (e.g. more damage)
• loot - I hate managing inventories (exception: switching gadgets to solve puzzles/different enemy types) and buying/selling stuff; I want that progression managed for me

Basically, I shouldn't have to think outside solving puzzles and fighting bosses.

Indie games are preferred.

Platforms:

• PC (or emulator) - preferred, esp if I can use my Steam Deck
• Switch
• Wii

I don't think I've ever played a game that has infuriated so much me with little things as much as this one. There are just SO FUCKING MANY little things that feel wrong that it really fucks up the experience.

I don't remember exactly when or where I got it, possibly a Fanatical bundle. Cheap game, good looking, "mixed" rating on Steam. "Can't be that bad". Indeed, it's not "that bad", but it's infuriating in the amount of little things that are kinda bad, that bad or really bad.

Now, the game is really good looking, the pixel art is a joy to see and the Castlevania SotN influence is extremely obvious, down to the double jump wing-flap and "ghosted" silhouette. Also, one of the characters, Allure, is like a cross of Alucard with Zero from Mega Man X. The control is great, though there is a big reliance on dashing for avoiding damage. In later dungeons, there's also a significant player skill requirement to get past some asshole-designed traps.

Some of my biggest gripes:

• Game has no pause, it acts like a permanent multiplayer server.
• There is zero in-game information for a LOT of important stuff. This is so bad that I only learned about certain features by reading the game description - like how raids are only supposed to happen every 7 days - and fucking patch notes, and even those can be stupidly unhelpful, like this absolute gem: 200% increased Floating Island. Buildings you can place on the town don't have a description, so other than the obvious mines, you're on your own to find out what each building produces or does.
• I still have no clue what Spirit does. It's one of your stats and that's it. Doesn't increase your hp/mp regen, doesn't increase how much you heal with magic, doesn't increase damage.
• Missions are all over the place and sometimes make no fucking sense. Hell, one of the very first missions asks for 30 flowers and 30 spores. The problem is that you only get 1, maybe 2, when you harvest them, and there are NOT 30 of them in the forest maps. Whenever the mission asks for a specific monster to be killed, prepare to wait forever for respawns and RNG.
• RNG will ruin your day when it comes to finding certain monsters or items. Watermelons are a low chance drop off chopped trees in the jungle. Milk is another item that's hard to come by due to low drop rate and you'll need 20 for one of the missions. Clay and Sand only drop from specific monsters and, despite being somewhat common construction materials, there is no building that collects them automatically - but you can still get osbidian mines!
• Inventory auto sorting sucks, the only consistent thing is that it puts consumables first, crafting materials second, equipment third. Other than that, it's whatever wherever, like how wood will be stuck between Topaz and Sapphire, while Amethyst goes way below on the list. It doesn't even stack together the same item. If you have a 23 and a 4 stack of wood, auto sorting won't make it a single 27 stack.
• Maps are uninteresting and have nothing worth exploring, no secret anything anywhere. They're also an OPTIONAL, completely linear progression. You automatically unlock new portals by leveling up. Oh, you have to mentally learn where each portal takes you, nothing is labeled
• Relics. They're little things that will sometimes appear in specific places in certain maps (yes, even this is fucking RNG dependent). They give small, permanent bonuses to your stats. The problem is that you lose ALL of them on death. They can reappear, if RNGesus deems it funny to see you losing it again within a minute.
• Crafting interface is fucking awful. Want to make 99 iron ingots? Gotta click the + button 98 times, then click "Craft". You can't see any recipes that you cannot make at the exact moment you open the menu - if you're not near an anvil, you cannot see the list of armors and weapons, period. The only "sorting" here is by tier
• You get absolutely no heads up about incoming raids. A purple health bar just shows up in the top middle of the screen when one starts and that's it. If you're too busy doing a dungeon or fighting a boss, fuck you.
• It takes like 14 or 21 in game days to even get the first raid and, judging by the achievements, the vast majority of players never even bothered to go that far into the game.
• Dungeon traps are 1-hit kills and their collision boxes are slightly larger than their actual sprites. Enemies will often walk around spikes, harassing you while you are unable to deal with them unless you kill yourself trying to kill them
• Elevators. They're sooooooo fuuuuuuuuckiiiiiiiiiing sloooooooowwww. There aren't many, but the few that are there will annoy the hell out of anyone
• Balance gets worse as you level up. From level 35 and onwards, nothing makes sense anymore. Equipment affixes/suffixes become less and less useful, as many of them are static numbers, like +50 atk, when simply changing ONE item from tier 8 to tier 9 can give you a 100atk boost. Armor values are the only ones that seem to grow little by little as levels advance.
• Imagine Diablo 2 loot drops, but worse in just about everything - lower drop rates, unhelpful extra effects, less time .
• Most dungeons' mythic loot is no different from heroic loot and tier 8 instead of 9.
• The witch boss always spawns a pool in front of her, making it near impossible to beat her with melee characters. There are many other situations where melee characters get shafted by asshole design and almost none where they shine over the ranged characters.

The game was abandoned less than a week after the 1.0 release in May 2022. A 1.02 patch was promised in June but never delivered. During the early development, it was marketed as something inspired by Terraria. It seems that any Terraria influence outside collecting resources has all but evaporated.

I have more gripes, but the ones above are those that I think are the most annoying. Like I said, there are just so many "little things" that it builds up the annoyance into full frustration.

One thing that didn't make the list but is worth mentioning is the amount of translation errors in PTBR: there are lots of words that were left in english. I understand the economic reason for thinking in english first (selling in USD is 5x more profitable) but come the fuck on, the entire dev team is Brazilian.

I don't feel comfortable using a mouse and I have no interest in working on my mouse skills. I play all of my games with either a controller or a keyboard, and I'm looking for 3rd-person shooters I can play with a controller.

I'm mainly interested in action games. I'm OK with a world with gated areas a la metroidvanias/soulslikes, but I'm not interested in full-on open world or narrative-driven games.

Examples of 3rd-person shooters I enjoyed playing with a controller: Gungrave, Vanquish, and Evil West.

Examples of 3rd-person shooters I don't enjoy and have no interest in: Uncharted, The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption, Dead Space, Control/Alan Wake, or GTA.

I mainly play on PC, Steam in particular, but I'll boot up emulators if the game is worth it.

Choice paralysis can hit you even if it's only about two things. In this case it's about two games that you will play for hundreds of hours.

I had “Horizon Zero Dawn” in my library for 3 years before I finally started a serious game and finished it this year. Currently replaying it again.

The successor is now on sale on Steam: €36.

I put “God of War” on my Steam wishlist after finishing “Horizon Zero Dawn” for the first time. I was looking for more open-world games of this kind, and it got recommended by fans.

It's now on sale on Steam: €20.

I can't play them both at the same time. And after playing one of them for 100 to 200 hours, the other will be on sale again.

What would you do? GoW, so that you don't stick in the same world for too long and have some variety in your escapism? Or HFW to see how the story continues without wasting any more time?

Would HFW disappoint me on my GTX 1070? Compared to HZD?

In this post I'm talking about Death Stranding 1 please don't spoil anything from Death Stranding 2

I've always been a fan of Hideo Kojima games. I wondered what that man could possibly bring to the table after the MGS series. he experimented with Silent Hills but it didn't quite pan out, To my disappointment, in 2019 his next video-game would be a PS4 exclusive and I didn't have one, so much like this community I was patient and waited.

While I was waiting, I remember checking how divisive this game was, a Hideo Kojima game that didn't crack the 90s on Metacritic. What did the game do that disappointed some people? Well, when I heard the words "Walking Simulator," I thought, Oh no...

I held that Oh no for years until I finally played it as a free game on Epic Games Store 2 years ago, and that Oh no turned into Oh yes, this is actually good.

Story:

Story-wise, Kojima isn't known for writing brilliance, not just with women characters. I guess in Metal Gear Solid V I liked him quite a lot he somewhat proved that he could write a gritty story with serious political undertones, until it goes back to fantasy villains. Quiet thrusting her ass at the camera to remind you that you are playing in fact a Hideo Kojima game, Dude has his fetishes as we all do I certainly do (profile says duh), you do, It's like expecting a Tarantino movie not to have feet in it. I don't blame the guy.

Kojima has always been portrayed as this larger than life developer, a genius a guy who can't do no wrong and for a lot of his career we always placed him above a pedestal, people like to point out mistakes and miracles onto one person, however Kojima Productions is a team with other hundred talented developers.

But a new start for Hideo, well the story of Death Stranding is about rebuilding America, and I wish Kojima had left it at that without going into detail, because the cutscenes bore me and some of them didn't make sense, In the MGS games I was invested with the characters so I didn't mind long cutscenes, In Death Stranding though I don't know why he expected us to have the same sort of connection, I personally didn't care much about what anyone had to say, there were some highlights but not a scene I could go and watch back.

The writing at times was quite laughable specifically the "I'm not that fragile line" and "I'm Mario and you are princess beach" which sounded funny, a lot of dialogue in DS could be attributed as "Characters delivering exposition to you" which in a non gameplay context like if you compare Kojima's writing to RDR2, Kojima's mumbo jumbo doesn't make any sense, I found myself laughing at it than with it. So if I didn't like the story what did I like about it so much?

Well, Gameplay:

Okay, this is why I loved this game, and this is where the game needed to deliver and deliver it did. The game has an enjoyable gameplay loop, and it's a really simple loop: here's a package, deliver it there. How you do it is up to you. Do you want to walk there? Use ladders in neat areas that give other players an advantage? You do you. I'm not going to hold your hand figure it out yourself

My only gripe was that I didn't understand how many players I was collaborating with. I'd assume there were a lot of players because I would occasionally walk by a ladder that made my distance much easier, and it would have a lot of likes.

But a fair argument would be: well, if you're trying to skip the game with clever structures that basically skip entire terrains, what's the point of even going through all the trouble? Well, the game doesn't force you to take them—whether you decide to is up to you. But what I like about the game is that it's your basic human instinct that says "I need some help," because the deliveries feel like a journey and you just can't wait to finally catch a rest at an outpost. And to me, that's what mattered, you actually were immersed as if you were Sam all along.

My favorite moment and basically the part that solidified the experience for me was when I was walking down a hill when unexpectedly Low Roar's I'm Leaving started playing, I literally felt chills and thought, Holy shit the game is absolutely beautiful when it wants to be, I immidiatelly added the song on my playlist and walked to my destination as soon as the song started to fade away.

Are the mechanics perfect? No, obviously there's some clunky stuff. But the game, for me, delivered on what it set out to do which is a journey.

The destination, though? Was it worth it? Eh. The bosses weren't all that great they felt needless. I wish Kojima experimented more with the ideas he had rather than just throwing some bosses your way. There was a war section I didn't like while the setting was cool, it felt like I was playing a Third person shooter when the game tried to have a story beat instead of serving me that gameplay loop which I liked, it failed.

All and all Death Stranding for me was a gameplay marvel that saved the whole game from being disappointing and for free? What a steal, I'll play Death Stranding 2 someday.

Thanks for the support on my Cyberpunk review I really like posting reviews here :)

I’ve been a member of a discord community for over 6 years now. On any given night you’ll find people playing anything from Battlefield 6, Arc Raiders, Overwatch 2, etc. It’s a very active community with weekly events and we even have a sim racing group finishing up another season in iRacing. If it sounds interesting, they have a website for applications Over 30 Clan

Apologies if this is considered soliciting. I don’t get many opportunities to mention it and it’s honestly a great community. It took me a long time to find one of this quality.

My review covers ONLY the base game. I haven't touched the DLC please don't provide spoilers but let me know if I should play it and better yet if I would enjoy it based on my complaints here. No Spoilers though

As much as you probably, I remember being incredibly hyped for this game since it's first gameplay trailer in 2018, to be fair I'm not really a Witcher kind of guy but Cyberpunk is a genre that intrigued me, back then I was more of an Outrun type of aesthetic guy, with an interest in how the future would look, flying cars, tall buildings, technology, augmented strippers, younger me was obsessed with the genre.

The presentation of the game shocked me, I still remember the trailer by heart with the apartment shootout the trauma medics coming with their vehicle at the end of the gig I thought, I don't know if it's a random encounter but it looked next gen gaming to me imagine if we were to do a gig during the night get involved in a shootout then walk back to our car overlooking the city, which leads us to.

Presentation This is one thing I think the game nailed it, younger me didn't realize all of this future would take part in a Capitalistic futuristic dystopia, the city does shine but also beyond the neon and the fancy lights you can see the gritty texture of the city, It still looks beautiful and I'm not running at the highest settings.

Even now I like traversing the city with a fast car but here's where my first criticism lies, while it may look beautiful even the backalleys the NPCs literally have nowhere to go, It's like they are walking in a straight line and they just exist so the city wouldn't look empty. Also there's nothing dynamic about the city I feel like it had some untapped potential for random encounters and minigames.

But what else did the Trailer hype younger me? Well the missions, you can imagine how hyped I was when the trailer narrator said "Random encountersl ike these are an example of how your actions directly influence your open world experience" So I was like "Holy shit, you are telling me I could actually maybe piss off some random corpo guy and I would maybe Roleplay as an outlaw"

Nope. You can imagine the disappointment when in 2020 I found out that the game has different introductions and they all lead to the same exact story, Corpo, Street Kid, Nomad, It's all the same, but that's fine I thought what about the side quest I mean it's CD Project Red we are talking about, what if someone random calls you up for a gig and it would be more of a Fallout situation where at least there's some flexibility in how you approach gameplay, No not really. I mean technically there are choices but it's mostly binary.

I didn't care about the bugs, I guess like all games have them what also mattered to me was the broken police system (still is) like what if the police could chase you in an interesting way, but most chases and detection system relies mostly on GTAs system. My main problem with the game as I was slowly playing it was "I mean I'm having fun, the story is engaging. I love how nicely written it is how the characters actually behave like human beings sitting in bars and talking like normal people, but imagine if it had a better groundwork"

Gameplay: gameplay is great, I had fun with the weapons, melee some side missions were neat I loved how they satirized the average surface level cricitism of Capitalism in a mission with Johnny not in favor of it obviously., I loved organizing my build and sneaking my way through most missions, shooting being the final choice.

The story while I liked the characters, I just wish my actions impacted the world I dreamt in 2018. I think the 30$ I gave for the physical version of the game are totally worth it, I got hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of it, It just wasn't what I anticipated.

Hey all, Sorry if this is not a great magazine to post this. I'm looking for a nice cozy game (for a non-gamer!) to play for about an hour or so a day instead of doomscrolling. I like the idea of a game where I can make slow progress, though I don't tend to like the traditional RPG style. But something like a slow moving simulator or whatever could be great (for example, I really enjoy MiniMetro on mobile). Thoughts?

Assuming the equipment was also saved so you could still play the games, and every game in existence you don’t mention gets permanently destroyed, and no new games are ever to be made.

Inspired by a video by OutsideXbox from a few years ago, I thought it would be a fun idea to see what this community would choose. You can choose to be selfish and pick games you personally want to always play, or try to figure out what games would be best chosen for humanity to save for whatever reason. I’d also love to hear why you chose your games. Do they have a special meaning to you? I want to hear your stories.

I finally got around to play it like a year ago, I guess my disappointment stands from the fact that It wasn't the RPG I was hoping for, an RPG where where my choices actually matter. And Yeah I get it's a Bethesda game and those things are warranted but I knew it wasn't going to be an open game from the first piece of dialogue.

I should of had an option where I could maybe stay in the mines and help out my people there, but I felt like it was Bethesda saying "Come on don't you want to see our mediocre storyline"

Speaking of mediocre storylines, I found the main story to be not good. I literally didn't care about super powers and the "chosen one" cliche is boring and monotonous. The ironic part is that I kind of enjoyed the Side quests that had you going up against factions but even those were lacking.

Overall a slim 5/10 because it was the game I expected, but I think in general it's an outdated game.

I finished the main Crown of the Magister campaign and wanted to check out some of the custom ones while I ponder whether to create a new party for Palace of Ice or not.

I downloaded the top 20 or so custom campaigns from the workshop, but so far the first hour or so of the few I've tried haven't been super gripping. I know that's not much to judge them off, but it doesn't help me decide if they're worth continuing with.

Which ones get really good, in your opinion? I have the Unfinished Business mod for max level cap and more classes, but I'm not using the 6-man party option, which I know a few campaigns are tuned for.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/49151220

I wanna get into it! Again!

Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines is the follow-up to 2022's Grapple Dog. The story picks up where the first game ended, with protagonist Pablo being recruited to save the world using his excellent grappling skills. This time, we meet a new character, Luna, who is playable alongside Pablo.

The grappling hook-focused platformer gameplay is back as well, where your speed and agility depend on your ability to swing to build up momentum.

You might see the bright colours, high-resolution pixel art, and lively energy, then remark, "this is like those Flash games Nitrome used to make!" That's what I thought as well when I discovered the previous game in the series, Grapple Dog. It turns out that the main developer, Joseph Gribbin, used to work for Nitrome, so that makes sense!

Top dog theming

Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines is a little more serious in tone but is still overall a simple, light-hearted 2D platformer story. This time around, the story gets bigger and the stakes get higher. There are more high-resolution cuscenes, they're more elaborate, and they're sometimes even animated. Pablo joins the fight against a multiversal threat, right after the ending of the first game and an off-screen wardrobe update.

I appreciate the more imaginative level theming this game presents. The first game relied on safer concepts for level themes — you know, beach, ice, forest, those kinds of themes. The elemental abilities introduced in this game made me expect more of the same for Cosmic Canines, but that pleasantly turns out not to be the case. You get to visit places like a futuristic monkey world, a noir cat world, and a frog dictatorship world.

Instead of having only one of these settings for each chapter, Cosmic Canines goes for variety. This is a multiverse we're saving, after all! Each chapter features multiple worlds, which sometimes reoccur between chapters.

Hanging with Luna

The most obvious addition to this game is Luna, a new playable character and the deuteragonist of the story. She and Pablo begrudgingly meet after they both respond to the call to protect the multiverse. The game has you playing as both characters in an even split, with half of the levels for Pablo and half for Luna. Like Pablo, she is indeed a dog and has a grappling hook, but otherwise has different abilities. And also a gun.

Luna introduces shooting gameplay to the Grapple Dog formula, with free 360° aiming. I find her controls more complex than Pablo's because her gameplay involves aiming and shooting in addition to grappling. Her levels also have a greater focus on combat and precision platforming compared to Pablo's, which focus more on swinging and maintaining speed. It sometimes feels like she only grapples as a commitment to the title of the game.

Luna also marks the first time I've ever decided to play a game by alternating between a controller and keyboard/mouse! Pablo's controls are exactly what I was used to from the first game, so I stuck to playing as him with a controller. In contrast, I found platforming and aiming at the same time to be easier with a keyboard and mouse, so I use those when I play Luna's levels.

Introducing Luna as another protagonist gives the game the opportunity to have more character interactions that are more substantial. There wasn't too much for Pablo to talk about in the first game. We even get a bit of character development for both protagonists in an otherwise straightforward, light story.

Swing to this beat

The soundtrack of the first game was great and that continues to this game. We can thank Queenjazz for this, who returned to make the soundtrack for Cosmic Canines, this time accompanied by WangleLine and HYPHA. I'm fond of the funky, sample-heavy style, which reminds me of the soundtrack of Jet Set Radio.

I actually discovered the first game, Grapple Dog, through Queenjazz. I found her in the music credits of Hypnospace Outlaw, looked up what other music she's made, and saw the soundtrack of Grapple Dog there.

Sequel hooked

As a sequel, Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines grapples with the same kinds of things that challenge all sequels. In its case, rather than being just a pack of additional levels, it chooses to expand on the mechanics of the first game and ramp up the difficulty faster. However, it still has to devote teaching time for the players who didn't play the first game.

Compared to the first game, there's less of a focus on pure grappling hook platforming, like needing to build up really fast jumps and swings or testing your agility with tricky grapple point placements. Grappling is obviously still around and critical to the game, but the levels devote more of their "difficulty budgets" on challenging you with the newly introduced abilities. For example, Luna has a very long dash in the place of Pablo's ground pound. Her levels, then, have a lot of large gaps to cross or walls of hazards to dodge using that dash.

With this expanded story and scope, I see parallels with Portal 2's position as a sequel to Portal. Like with Portal 2, Cosmic Canines is a bigger adventure with more to do, but as a result, it loses some of the simplicity and purity of the first game. It does make callbacks to its history, with some mechanics from the first game reappearing, but each of those only reappear once. Overall, though, I don't see this as such a tragedy: there's more to enjoy in Cosmic Canines than in the first Grapple Dog. Nothing from the first game is really gone in the move to this one.

One thing I did notice as a Grapple Dog veteran is that this game feels easier overall. Time trial and bonus level requirements seem to be a lot more forgiving than the previous game. Additionally, you had only four hit points in the first game, but that's now upgradeable to eight, which lets you play a lot more recklessly. This doubled health is especially handy for getting fast times in the time trials. Why navigate around the spikes when you can just eat the damage and jump through to the other side in half the time? It was really only in the post-game levels where I felt the pressure to be careful with my health.

It's hard for me to tell if this game feels easier because I already had a lot of experience from the first game or because this game really is less difficult. The frist Grapple Dog did get some criticism for being too hard, so Cosmic Canines could have been designed in response to that.

Also, there's a level editor! I'm not much of a level designer, but it's cool that I can have even more Grapple Dog to play.

Finish line

Just completing the campaign doesn't take too long. A basic run will get you to the weak ending, which has a cliffhanger and some incomplete character development. If you want the good ending, though, you'll have to be more thorough in collecting items and getting good times in the campaign levels. That will unlock a series of post-game levels called the Trials of Egress. These levels are especially lengthy and difficult and will demand a deeper understanding of the game's mechanics.

And there's still more! There are secrets all over the game that you can only access by cleverly using game mechanics in ways the game otherwise never tests you on. You'll need to figure those out for 100% completion.

And yes, you can pet the dogs.

They just released the sequel, (sadly not up to its predecessor from what I gathered), and it's Halloween, so what better time to talk about this special vampire game?

It was the last game by Troika and they were creating a mix of RPG and Acton and an early version of open world with a lot of incredible side content. And it is precisely this optional content that fleshed out the world so much and made it feel more real. The action part was not exactly stellar, although it was kind of funny as a Nosferatu in the late game to simply be invisible for ever and just stealth takedown all the enemies. Boss fights did not go so easily in contrast... I would even say the main story is nothing to write home about, although with a fun twist. The side content is what I enjoyed immensely however. Because it didn't feel like the game was telling me: oh, go down that alley, it looks like there could be something with a big arrow. Instead I was simply put into the world and was free to explore it. And if I stumbled on something, that made the enjoyment that much higher, because I felt that exploration was rewarded.

It's great strength is also that it takes role playing serious and let's you commit to a certain character. Depending what vampire clan you belong to, your game experience can be very different. I chose the butt ugly Nosferatu, which meant I couldn't even be seen on the street by humans without them calling me a monster and attacking me. So i was forced to move in the sewer or go invisible. That made certain interactions much harder. But other Nosferatu NPCs were cool with me but aren't so friendly to normal pretty face vampires in contrast to how they treated me.

This game is set in the Vampire: the Masquerade setting of World of Darkness, which is normally a tabletop RPG. You do not need to know anything to enjoy the game. It contains a lot of explanation for new players to understand the world. For me it was also the entry point without any other knowledge before.

If you want to try it out: use the fan patch, it fixes bugs and adds some cut content.

So to those who played it: tell us some of your stories and what you liked about this game, to wake the interest of new players.

Bro has negative tact