Fear_the_Booboo

For me the only Ubisoft game that I was hoping to see is Gods and Monsters (whatever new title it has), so I was disappointed to not see it but maybe they had said it was a no-show already? I don't have much interest in Watch_Dogs, AC or Far Cry, so I that show wasn't for me.

Echoing everything in this thread.

I get the feeling Alex has, really, I've been forced to work on site during the pandemic while my work is DEFINITELY NOT essential but, you know, *gesture at capitalism*. While I've been here for a while, I never needed and watched GB content as much as now. I've been playing way more mindless games to take the edge off, and having GB as a second screen has been perfect. I've binged GB content like I never did before, it's reassuring and calming. I don't want anyone working on the team hiding their fears or their dissatisfaction with everything going on right now, but I want them to know that their work is very much appreciated, especially now.

When I found the website I had just moved to a new country and having a routine with "I love Mondays" and weekly quick looks helped a ton while I was very lonely in my new place. This year's events put myself and a ton of other people in a similar limbo state and I'm so happy GB is still there for me.

Uh, I played a bunch in the Giant Bomb Sum 2020 room and thought even with a standard I could go where most GB players will be. Not that it changes that much, but I know I will avoid most toxicity there and that the players will mostly be into Trackmania as it is meant to be played, meaning with atrocious music and too many overlays.

Curious to see how it will evolve, I'd love to play with the GB community but it will depends on if there is public rooms or not.

Being a weirdo it's between Kentucky Route Zero and Tales from Off-peak city for me.

I agree with you on both Cris Tales and Ghostrunner, they both have potential but I can see them missing the mark quite a lot.

I played a few others:

- Garden Story: The vibe is nice but the controls need a lot of work. Felt very unresponsive so I didn't keep with it. Hopefully it'll be better at release.

- Röki: Fairly standard puzzle/adventure game so far but it got nice graphics and the writing seems to be good.

- Black Book: The most intriguing one to me so far. It has a card-based combat system and a pretty interesting story where you play as a woman trying to invoke demons to get a man that killed himself back from hell. I don't have a good idea of how well the combat will evolved, it definitely needs more impactful animations, but the story seemed pretty interesting to me.

- Riftbreaker: Good mix of twin-stick shooter, arpg upgrades and RTS/tower defence building management. The productions values are very high and while the theme is not the most interesting to me, it seems to be fun to play.

- Chicory: Really liked that one too, it's hard to say if the mechanics will evolve past standard 2d-Zelda type stuff but the writing is charming as hell. Some of the team worked on Wandersong and it shows.

It has a 95 metacritic score so you're definitely not alone...

I'm of two mind about the fan reaction (and not far enough to have my own opinion on it), if the characters truly are acting in illogical ways and are not consistent with who they were in the previous game, it can be pretty damning as far as the writing goes. On the other hand fans tend to react overly negatively with whatever doesn't fit their head canon, so I'm taking the initial reactions with a grain of salt.

Anyway I'm two hours in and I enjoy it as pure spectacle. It's a beautifully made game and it's hard not to be impressed at the artistry at play here. That being said I have hard time taking the game seriously as the "high art" it wants to be, though keep in mind I had the same reaction to the first game.

Personally I'm of the mind that if the game really want to comment on the violence at play here, it should be at least willing to mechanically represent the violence in a way that is consistent with its theme, which like the first game it doesn't (so far). For as much as the aesthetic has a layer of realistic violence over everything, mechanically this is still nearly as gamey as any Uncharted games. I have trouble taking the violence in a game seriously when I literally kill thousands of people, if the game wants me to take it seriously it should also be able to take itself seriously enough for its mechanics to be in line with its meaning. "This is how video games are", which is basically what Neil Druckman said when asked about that ludonarrative dissonance thingy, is basically saying games don't deserve this kind of critical attention and ignore the fact that some indies definitely have mechanics in line with their ideologies. I think we gave a pass way too easily to Last of Us on that case (funnily enough, Uncharted doesn't bother me cause its thematically more in line with unrealistic american super heroes, and in that context I can accept that there's a bunch of no-name bad guys that needs killing).

Anyway, I'm off subject here, I'm enjoying it but there's definitely a lot of valid criticisms that you can apply to this game. The fan reaction though, I'm taking with a grain of salt.

@frostyryan: Dunno how much you need to know, I've played two hours so far and it has not happened yet.

The only sexual content right now has been that Ellie and Dina kissed and it is implied they had sex, but it wasn't shown.

Voted 400$ but really I mean about 550 canadian and that is if there's backward compatibility. I'm usually an early adopter cause I geek on tech but I might skip day 1 for this gen cause no game interests me (I don't care about Spider-Man and I doubt Ratchet and Clank will be day one), but if I can play Bloodborne on my new fancy console that'd be enough to me to burn 400$ on it cause I'm stupid.

I'll end up buying both, I'm like that, but for the first time ever the fact that I have a good PC might make me wait a few months.

@onemanarmyy: Gosh I loved Sacrifice and I thought it was completely forgotten.

I guess my hot take is that the idea of having a game that checks your previous choices for the future, especially in multiple games, a la Mass Effect, is just impractical on a big scale. It works well for marketing, but it's bound to be limited by the content pipeline and be less than ideal. Some hide it better than others, but the seams are always visible for me.

I wish we'd kind of abandon that in heavily scripted game until we have better solutions. For now it works in game that tells systemic stories (ie. Crusader Knights or Dwarf Fortress) or a game where the content is not detailed on a AAA level, making it more possible to create content that you can miss (Baldur's Gate, Divinity, Visual Novels, etc.).

@npfeifer: On a big enough TV of course you see the difference between 900p and 1080p. Same thing as 4k, it's minor, but it's there. Will it make a game unplayable for me? Of course not. But that doesn't mean I should ignore it.

I had friends at the beginning of the PS3 and 360 era arguing about resolutions, basically as soon as HD tv were a thing, so no it's not something that came with Digital Foundry. And again, as someone who works on games, even though I don't use technology on that level, it's interesting to follow the why and how some game can achieve better performances, even if it's minimal, on different hardware.

Like it's kinda annoying because your argument come from a place of completely dismissing others experiences'. You're acting like a noticeable difference should be meaningless, it can be for you and that's fine, but it's not for everyone.

I still played and enjoyed Bloodborne on PS4 even though it was not a consistent 30 fps, I wasn't freaking out about it being unplayable (though I know some who were) but if a better version would've been available at release, it would've informed my choice of purchase to be in the know about it.