Jason Moyer on 18/5/2025 at 02:45
I've tried repeatedly since it came out to finish Arcanum and I always bounce off of it. I think it's how dreadful the combat is. Like, Torment had dreadful combat but it was still using AD&D 2.5 or whatever so there was at least a good framework to work with, Arcanum had that weird "should would we do turn-based or real-time" thing and they both suck. The writing from the half a game or whatever I played was pretty good as I remember, but man there's way too much combat for how bad it is.
WingedKagouti on 18/5/2025 at 08:13
Arcanum is a game I had fun completing, but I have never had any real desire to return to it. It's a fine game with some great ideas for worldbuilding, but the story itself is forgettable and the combat has no sense of balance, with one early spell being OP in real time combat, but nearly useless in turn based. From what I recall, the first half is by far the strongest narratively, with the second half being mostly catapulted to new locations in comparatively quick succession, making it feel like a string of "Now go visit the dwarf city, have a misunderstanding that forces some quest and resolve it, leave the city and never return." visits to various locations before the final showdown with the big bad.
Sulphur on 25/5/2025 at 02:02
Jesh and I completed Split Fiction yesterday, and it's earned a call-out: if you like video games and have someone who does too, play it with them. It's not quite as thoughtful as Portal 2 in the co-op design, but it makes up for that by having enough ideas that would have been fuel for an entire 20 different games, no word of a lie. There's an almost breathless pace to the way mechanics unfurl in each level, and it's always done with such joy that I can't fault the designers for throwing everything they could at the wall - better yet, most of it sticks. This isn't the work of a newbie team trying things out, it's a bunch of savvy people versed in game design borrowing mechanics from all over video game land and spinning them out with enough verve and skill to make them feel at home for the player, almost always in a way that's fun or wacky or inspires delight.
Having said that, the difficulty curve is a bit schizophrenic: I wasn't always a fan of how often I kept dying to things that required split-second reflexes, because I wasn't keyed to needing that during the less-challenging parts of the game that happened just minutes before, and it doesn't help that the default controls are a bit stiff. The trade-off in having so many, many moments of inspired design ingenuity means that even the base mechanics aren't as tight as, say, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, which is a game with a solid core foundation to its controls that's steadily added to over the course of play.
If you're okay with the balance being on sheer creativity over precision, then you should probably just grab this game, a friend, and a weekend, and have a blast. The final level is basically the developers showing off, as Jesh put it, but they show off in a way that put a wide grin on our faces, and it's a bravura display of technical chops and creativity yet again, a fantastic capper to a great experience.
Graphically, it looks phenomenal and plays well - I was on the PS5, and it was a buttery smooth 60 FPS, while Jesh was on PC (there's cross-play) and he had a mostly trouble-free experience barring some frame-rate oddities and freezing. It also looks phenomenal, and given that it's a UE4 game, it does have me questioning whether we need UE5 at this point when we have visuals at this level at 60+ FPS. It's frequently very beautiful, and I never questioned the need for things like RT in it. UE5's feature-set is just too demanding for current machines to run at a decent level and look as good.
(I haven't mentioned the story because, frankly, it's the least interesting part of the game. It's fine, it's not great, it's not terrible, and it works as the framework for what the game is doing with its levels, and gets its shots in about using machines to steal creativity - that earns it some points, so overall it's... adequate. There's some gesturing at trauma and healing, and it almost gets there in its quieter moments, but this isn't a game built to be quiet, so emotional beats and depth are often shortchanged for something exploding. Don't go in expecting a great story, and you'll be fine, because the game part more than makes up for it.)
Thirith on 27/5/2025 at 15:02
I've been playing Old Skies recently. It's very enjoyable, though like most of Wadjet's games the puzzles aren't exactly going to make players feel like brainiacs. Mainly it's the storytelling and characters, and those are solid as always, using time travel tropes to good - sometimes funny, sometimes poignant - effect.
Sulphur, if you're reading this: have you checked out the full game? If so, what did you think of it?
Sulphur on 29/5/2025 at 13:30
Not played the full game yet, no. I liked the demo well enough that I'm keeping an eye on it for when I need more Wadjet Eye goodness. I like the change in art style from oldschool pixels to full-on painted backgrounds and rotoscoped character animation - Ben Chandler does good work in both modes, though obviously the nostalgic charm of fuzzy, chunky pixels is lost here, but it's like trading Monkey Island in for Broken Sword - both are good in their own right.
I'll be honest, a lot of time I play Wadjet Eye's games thinking 'this is good, almost great', and then I start thinking about how with just a little more depth in the character development or plot it'd be brilliant and affecting, but very good isn't easy to achieve either, and not as consistently as Gilbert does. Consistency is probably WE's greatest asset, and why I find myself thinking about their games every now and then, unbidden.
Thirith on 1/6/2025 at 09:36
I very much agree with that take. Old Skies, like all the other Wadjet Eye games I've played before, is consistently good, even if they've rarely had moments - writing, plot points, characters, puzzles - that stood out for me they way some of the moments in my favourite point and click adventures stand out.
Having finished Old Skies (and I'd say it's a game that mostly gets better as it moves towards its ending), I'm now exploring the Vatican as Indiana Jones, and I'm loving how much Indiana Jones and the Great Circle captures the look and feel of Indy's adventures, but I'm sort of wishing that the environments were a bit more like those designed by Arkane. The level design is good and the places never feel anything less than real, but they could be designed better to guide the player in subtle ways. So far there've been few of those moments where you think "I wonder what's through that doorway" because of an audio cue or the way the light falls on the arch. The places look gorgeous and make sense, but they could do with being the teensiest bit more *designed* - like the best locations in Dishonored, for instance. They are designed in the obvious ways - i.e. you can climb here -, but I've not seen much of the more subtle, interesting kind of structuring.
Edit: Actually, after two more hours in the Vatican, I have changed my opinion, at least somewhat: the location is designed so that you cross it repeatedly, and over time you begin to understand how it hangs together. Which means that there's a fair bit of backtracking, but that's not something I mind, and definitely not in this game. It also helps to focus on one activity at a time, rather than jumping between them to see if your current location has an inscription to take a photo of (or a cat) or some relic to find. Once I began to play in a more focused way, letting my current task determine where I went, things started to make more sense.
Malf on 2/6/2025 at 10:46
After starting on Andor season 2 this weekend, I got a hankering for some non-space-wizard gallavanting in a galaxy far, far away.
So given reactions here and recent updates that have been received positively, I decided to take a chance on The Adventures of Nix and his Faithful Human Companion, Kay Vess.
And so far, it's scratching that itch admirably, while at the same time not quite feeling like Yet Another UbiGame™.
There's plenty of non-combat gameplay and talkie bits with delicious choice and consequences thanks to the faction system. I am pleasantly surprised!
It was a bit crashy to start with, but an nVidia driver update seems to have smooted things out.
It helps that Nix is one of the most useful sidekicks I've played with in this type of game, while also being lovingly animated.
I'm playing on the highest difficulty and viewing out-and-out combat as essentially being a fail-state (although shooty stuff is still quite easy), and it supports all sorts of interesting approaches to scenarios; effectively, you can see that it's made by the same subdivision that made The Division, while also pinching some of the better ideas from WatchDogs and streamlining them (in a good sense).
As with all games, I am very much in the honeymoon period at the moment, so my opinions may sour over time.
But otherwise, I'm really liking it!
Thirith on 2/6/2025 at 13:54
I'm wondering if a Star Wars space sim along the lines of the X-Wing series, one that would lean into the everyday lives of pilots much more so than the big spectacle of blowing up Death Stars, would have much of a chance these days. I love what these games (TIE Fighter even more so, but these days it'd definitely take on a different flavour to fly for the space fascists) did, and I could definitely see a game that takes inspiration from Andor. But in the end, it's likely that publishers and gamers would want the bombast first and foremost, and even that wouldn't guarantee success...
Edit: Also, Malf, are you running Star Wars Outlaws with all the RTX bells and whistles? How does it look and run?
henke on 8/6/2025 at 11:11
I played through the latest Alone In The Dark this weekend. Edward Carnby's story at least. From what I gather playing through it with Emily is mostly the same campaign, with some slight tweaks.
A solid survival horror game in the RE remakes mold. The combat is decent and it looks good. It could've stood to be a bit scarier tho, and the puzzles a bit harder. But the story was great, with some real good twists and solid performances by David Harbour and the rest. It's on PS+, so if ya got or find it in a sale I'd definitely recommend it!
Malf on 9/6/2025 at 05:39
Quote Posted by Thirith
Edit: Also, Malf, are you running
Star Wars Outlaws with all the RTX bells and whistles? How does it look and run?
Sorry Thirith, I missed this.
Yes, I am playing it with all RTX bells and whistles, although NOT resolution scaling, and my resolution is 2560x1440.
It plays and looks really nice, with no noticeable framedrops.
But it does have some occasional unsightly RT "smearing." Although it's not where you'd usually expect to see it (weapon animations and other close-up stuff), primarily because it's a third-person game.
No, it's interface elements and post-processing effects, such as drop-shadows and vignetting.
