Tomi on 25/12/2023 at 17:33

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I've read lots of reviews for EA Sports WRC (such an awful name), but I can't remember any of them being overly critical about the realism or car handling. In fact most reviews have praised the handling, including several sites that specialise in racing games. It's the performance issues, somewhat outdated graphics, and lack of polish here and there that's mentioned in just about every review.

EA WRC is surprisingly cheap for a brand new game, and it can already be found in the bargain bin, so I'm very tempted to buy it on my XBox before the end of the year. Or maybe I'll just wait some more and hope that it gets added on the Game Pass... :D

Nameless Voice on 1/1/2024 at 15:37

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2023 was a great year for gaming. I actually played a full 10 games this year, most of them 2023.


* Darktide was my most-played game this year.
After a rough launch in 2022, Fat Shark spent several months patching it, to convert it from great-but-flawed to just great.
I love how many meaningful character build choices they added in the recent big class update.
* Shadow Gambit took Mimimi's stealth-strategy formula and made it more free-form, with innovative new characters - though its story and challenge suffered slightly from this freedom.
Have only just started on the new DLC.
It's sad that this will be the studio's final game.
* The System Shock remake by Night Dive was great, and really faithful to the original.
I felt it was let down a little by the overly pixellated art and a lack of music, but otherwise it was awesome, and I wouldn't feel too bad if someone played it instead of the original.
* Amnesia: The Bunker saw Frictional moving away from their recent run-and-hide horror, and returning to letting the player fight back to some extent, while also adding some light immersive sim systems - all without compromising the horror.
* Boltgun was a retro shooter that felt a bit like it came from an alternate history where FPSes stayed using classic sprites-in-3D instead of moving to full 3D.
I liked how it added verticality and some modern mechanics to the old formula, rather than just directly copying it.
* Aliens: Dark Descent was an interesting mix of strategy-stealth-horror, managing to invoke the film's balance of powerful marines up against something even more frighting.
While your marines could win firefights, drawing too much attention would quickly get you overrun and dead.
* Shadows of Doubt, currently still in Early Access, is probably the closest thing to Warren Spector's "One City Block" concept.
An entire simulated city where everyone has a detailed life, but sometimes they murder each other and you have to use the evidence to solve these crimes.
* Honourable mention to System Shock 2, which, while certainly not a recent game, I did play and record an entire pacifist run of this year.
Sanity is for the weak!
* On the smaller side, I played Drivin' Bob, a tiny little game by Henke!
* And the demo for Sorceress, which shows a lot of promise at replicating some of Dark Messiah's great combat, but in a much lighter and more whimsical setting.


There were also a lot of other interesting games released this year which I just haven't got around to looking into yet!
Still, I have to say that "too many good new games to play" isn't exactly a terrible problem to have!

demagogue on 1/1/2024 at 19:45

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I think your intuition is probably right. Shadow of Doubt is still a mess. It has a core game concept in it that I think is solid, but so many things are off kilter ... the bizarre and unintuitive UI, the buggy or fiddly interactions, the template emails, comments, identities, and cases ... and the actual cases and core gameplay don't flow well. But for all that, I still like it, and I feel good when I crack a case. I think people are hoping that the world can take on a life of its own, where it doesn't feel so template-made and feels more simulated, or more thought it put into how crimes come together and how the evidence lays out.

What I think would be a great update is if it's not isolated crimes, but it simulates gangs, mafia and corrupt official hierarchies, so you're gathering evidence slowly from a lot of people and places about the top fish, with things like wire taps, photos of meetings, etc., things that require the criminal patterns to be simulated and actually carried out logically ... like mules pick up drugs and deliver them to the crack houses, or the soldiers use a code language with each other. I think the process of putting that kind of thing in the game would also make it a better game.

But for what it is now I still like the whole process of gathering evidence to solve a crime, wonky as it is. And it is getting better with each update. I still put it on my best of list, more for what it promises to be than what it is right now though.