chk772 on 16/9/2025 at 16:45
Quote:
What are ya playin' in 2025?
Thief...
henke on 21/9/2025 at 15:27
Ok, finished Atomfall in ~16h, went with the voice on the phone ending. Yeah, this was really good! Great environments, great exploration, very fun combat, intriguing mystery. There were only a few times where it felt a bit aimless and dragging on, but it always got back on track. It's odd that it seems to have generated so little buzz, but I imagine it's one that a lot of folks will discover over the coming years and be delighted by.
Aja on 22/9/2025 at 14:39
I've had Atomfall on my wishlist since I first heard about it a few months ago, but there are only so many $80 games I'll buy in a year, and the last two I got, Indiana Jones and Death Stranding 2, left me cold. So I guess if I'm going to spend big bucks on a single game, I want to be pretty sure that I'll love it. Meanwhile I've spent way more this year on smaller budget games for Steam Deck plus VR on the PS5 and have had a much better time.
Sulphur on 22/9/2025 at 15:09
I returned to Metroid Prime after a long hiatus, and my original impression stands: it's a tight, beautifully designed game that mostly wants you to get lost and experiment and figure stuff out on your lonesome. The tools are idiosyncratic but faithful to the 2D Metroids, the level design has that clever construction from Ico and, later on, the Souls games, where your unlocked traversal options fill in your mental map of how the geography folds back in on itself with that *click* of satisfaction in your head. Importantly, everything fits together, the experience is butter-smooth and tactile, the small details are wonderful (I always get a kick out of seeing Samus's face reflect inside her helmet visor when an explosion flashes near her) and figuring out shit is mostly satisfying and makes you feel clever. It's not bastard hard, it's really nice to look at, and there's plenty of atmosphere even if its maps are compact (but I think they're just the right size).
It's a beautiful conversion of 2D Metroid into the third dimension, always has been, but the Switch version pretties it up into something that looks almost damn immaculate. Some of the pros also double as cons - getting lost can be tedious because of the backtracking; even when you do know were to go, trudging back is still tedious; figuring out where to go next can be trial and error; and the extra-fiddly bits with the morph ball aren't very fun. But some of the best games also require you to put in the work to make it feel worthwhile, and Metroid Prime is absolutely one of those, so I can't begrudge it the occasional bit where I'm flailing around, because that's part of what makes uncovering the way forward fun - they knew I would flail, but they also knew I wouldn't for too long because they built the solutions to feel intuitive once I'd felt my way around the geography. That's classic design in action, and the sort of talent that not just any game developer has.
Good stuff, and I'm looking forward to keep going with it this time.
Thirith on 23/9/2025 at 14:01
I would dearly love a good, proper 3D Metroidvania in VR. In fact, I would love the Metroid Prime trilogy in VR. Design-wise it could work very well; even the imperfect solution of using a VR emulator for Gamecube is already pretty cool, but it misses out on the Wii controls of the trilogy, which could translate quite easily to VR.
I know it won't happen (unless some clever VR modders manage to build on the VR emulation), but I can dream, can't I?
Tomi on 25/9/2025 at 13:22
I finished Expedition 33! It's a good one, but a decent story and nice facial animations aren't enough to make it a GOTY contender for me. While I found the combat quite fun in the beginning, it started to feel very repetitive pretty quickly. Progression depends way too much on leveling up your characters, which is something that I never enjoy in any game. Some of the optional bosses that I "saved for later" because they were too challenging in mid-game were ridiculously easy later on with my leveled up guys... That always feels so disappointing! Revisiting places is particularly frustrating when you can't avoid fighting a bunch of easy enemies that are there only to waste your time, not to provide any kind of a challenge.
Quote Posted by Malf
I did enjoy it for what it was, but also found that past the midpoint (the first "ending", so to speak), it lost its momentum, and the gameplay, what little of it there already was (a core problem I find with JRPGs), just dropped off a cliff. With distance, it's only served to reinforce why I don't like JRPGs. Unreactive worlds plus on-rails character and story "development". They're just visual novels with added complications.
Calling Exp33 just a visual novel may be a bit too much, but apart from that I agree with you. While the game world is occasionally pretty to look at, to me it feels like an empty shell with way too many invisible walls all over the place. I like to explore places and I did that a lot in this game as well, but apart from the glowing blobs here and there, there's nothing to be found. I think that a more on-rails experience would have worked better in Expedition 33 - the pseudo open-world stuff doesn't really add anything to the game and the story would probably feel more coherent without any of that.
Still, I'm glad that I played Expedition 33 and I even enjoyed a big part of it, but it's not a game that I'd like to play for a second time.
Jason Moyer on 28/9/2025 at 17:11
It's weird how long VR seems to be clinging on this time around. The last 5 times it was a fad it seemed like it went away within a year or so.
henke on 29/9/2025 at 14:12
Finished Baby Steps in 9.8h. It's a less punishing game than Getting Over It because you can't fall all the way back to the start, usually losing only ~15min of progress at most, and also its severest challenges are optional. It's heavy on exploration, and with no map or markers of any kind you really just have to survey the landscape and decide on the optimal route. It plays great, but what was the most surprising was the story side of things. It gets real. I mean, it gets goofy and silly and weird and I wasn't expecting quite so many big, swinging horse dicks, but also... it gets real, man. I got emotional playing this game, and it wasn't just the expected emotions of joy and rage. It runs the full gamut. What a game. Highly recommended.
Thirith on 29/9/2025 at 20:34
Man, henke that take on the game makes me really interested - and at the same time I'm pretty sure I would not enjoy playing the game... but I want to see how this game can evoke the emotions you mention... but playing it is likely to make me anxious and crabby and wish I was playing another game... but it does surprising, moving things in its story!
It's a conundrum, man. For now I've put it on my Steam wishlist. Let's see what happens.
