RiotControl

Every time there's a topic like this anywhere, the same lower budget European RPGs are listed. I agree with pretty much all of them. Two Worlds, Risen, Technomancer, Game of Thrones, etc, etc. I think maybe we all just love that similar RPG loop of dialogue, loot and questing that we're willing to go anywhere to get that fix. I think the fact that these middling games exist probably explains why we have to go to them in the first place; they're extremely difficult to make and we only see maybe one big one a year.

Only one I'd disagree with is Bound By Flame. I've played all of Spiders games and that one was terrible to me across the board. Even the similar Mars: War Logs was more enjoyable to me, but that was appropriately priced and at least had Mars as the setting which automatically makes it interesting.

A lot of Sony's problems over the years have been well documented, discussed and debated on all sorts of financial and tech papers/blogs. That'd probably be your best start to finding out how they lost their dominance.

I have my own reasons for leaving them behind. Regardless of the quality of their products, their customer support has to be the worst I've ever experienced across all of their products. Unacceptably bad, which is NOT the case from their competitors. If Samsung products had a 100% fail rate, I'd still buy their products over Sony because I know they'd solve my problem and repair/replace their product with minimal/no cost to me. Good luck getting Sony to fix your product from a manufactured or design flaw in the product. I'd have left the Playstation forever after the PS2 if there was viable competition in my eyes. (Not counting PC, which I view as one part of gaming you need in addition to a console and a handheld)

I think the consensus on Wolfenstein 2 based on comments is that we all just wanted the same frenetic action of the TNO, running from cover to cover, constantly needing to find a new position to gain an advantage with a multitude of powerful and less powerful enemies hunting us all the while dual wielding machineguns like an insane guerilla killing machine. (But also needing to switch them often based on the situation)

Yeah, the sequel kind of kills that regardless of your difficulty. The AI just instantly nails you the second you leave cover or try running from cover to cover if you even try aggressive TNO tactics. Which is odd because unlike TNO, when the AI is the one attacking you in TNC, they hesitate for a full second before firing. It's weird... and I took advantage of that for the entire game. It basically encourages if not demands that you just camp and nail enemies one by one as they run to the camping spot you set up. If you charge them, they hit you the instant you leave cover, so why bother? The lower health didn't help things either. A common complaint is that people weren't even aware of how much damage they were taking and then... boom dead. There's definitely a lack of feedback regarding incoming damage. I basically just used the dual-machine guns and the lasergewehr for one-shot-kills on heavy enemies for the entire game. So boring...

For the areas that are wide open and without cover, I just stealthed through... and let me tell you, if you're going to eventually get both of these games, I'd say that going from the stealth on Dishonored 2 or even a game like Prey and then playing Wolfenstein 2 like I did... will drive you insane.

I assume that when you say it had a very similar visual style to Darkstone, that the game had 3D graphics, right? That's a good search starting point because the vast majority of Diablo clones back then did not have 3D graphics.

I know Fate started in a town that lead directly to a dungeon AND that game was packed in with many store-bought PC's via WildTangent software in demo form.

I'm having trouble thinking of 3D isometric action RPGs from the 90's though. Revenant is a good example of a game that controls like Diablo, but really isn't a Diablo clone. Can you remember how similar it was to Diablo? Although many games like Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and Nox had 3D models in a 2D environment.

The Wolfenstein package sounds like a great deal. I didn't care for Wolfenstein 2 at all. I feel like it was inferior to the original in every possible way by a large margin excluding graphics, but the original is amazing. The Old Blood is a nice deal sweetener as well.

I'm definitely one that has completely lost interest in the RTS genre. I have no intentions of ever going online with an RTS ever again. The ceiling for improvement in skill in RTS games was always massive, but it seems that once South Korea became visible to your average gamer, strategies and methods of playing changed so quickly as Western players adapted that I felt like the entire genre just left me behind in the dust. I was never going to attempt to play like them, so I just threw in the towel. It's intensive enough to learn RTS games because of the sheer amount of knowledge you need that is NOT directly related to inputs and reactions. Even more so than a fighting will ever be, watching other players to learn new strategies is absolutely required. You simply won't stumble upon every new strategy, tactic or trick on your own no matter how much you focus on one faction. But the straw that broke the camel's back was again, the method of playing that spread so quickly via South Korean RTS pro's.

Actually, I did try out Dawn of War 3 during its free weekend on Steam and for the first RTS game I've tried seriously playing in over a decade, I could barely keep up with even the simple fundamentals. So now there's the fact that I've lost much of my skill as the decades keep going by. Do I want to start from scratch again? I'm also older now. I could barely keep up with my many, many different units at different locations while managing a base and DoW3 is a game that has intentionally simplified that logistical and tactical load on players. I just can't go back anymore. That's why I loved Company of Heroes and Dawn of War 2. They were RTS games I could still play.

Of course, one controversial opinion I have is that I feel the controls of RTS games are still a hassle. Maybe that's due to my reasons stated above, but it is a nightmare maneuvering your armies who are holding multiple locations, more than one of which may be in combat while juggling between your units, using and targeting abilities from many different units all the while holding up your logistical backbone with resource gathering, exploring, scouting, expanding, upgrading and while simultaneously executing on an overall economic and army strategy that will have to change on the fly as you try to remember the counters, tactics and strategies that you read up on or watched from replays. This didn't seem to be as big of an issue when I was a kid playing Starcraft and C&C, so maybe it is my age plus the decade+ spent not touching RTS games. Either way, it's just too god damn much for my brain and fingers to handle now.

Also, I hate MOBA's. I think it's a bit too much of a stretch to say that MOBA's are the reason the RTS genre has faded. I think there are obviously ex-RTS players who've shifted to MOBA's, but to say that all RTS players jumped ship is too much of a stretch to cover the "death" of an ENTIRE genre. I think my post would probably sum up why a lot of people left and not all of them went to MOBA's, I'd imagine. They just went anywhere but back to RTS games. Likewise, the hurdles for new players is self explanatory. I don't think MOBA's are the only reason RTS games don't get new blood. The fact that they're a massive hill to climb is enough of a deterrent on its own.

The marketing of Mass Effect: Andromeda was so god-awful that I never got excited for it to begin with. The endless dev-documentary videos with the unbelievably boring stage demos just left me without any confidence for the game.

Prey would have definitely been on my list if I hadn't picked it back up recently. The beginning of that game was so unbelievably boring that I just left it untouched for over a month. Finally started playing it again and it's getting closer to that Bioshock experience everyone is talking about, but I haven't found any useful powers since virtually everything requires rank 3 of whatever ability and upgrade items aren't exactly rolling in so far. So for now, hitting stuff with a wrench, then stunning and going back after them with a wrench is starting to get old. I used that strat in Bioshock, but it also forced me to use guns and other powers at times, too. We'll see what I think of it by the end.

Uncharted: Lost Legacy was disappointing for me. It fixed everything I disliked about Uncharted 4 and yet... I still couldn't really get into it. Am I just tired of the formula? At some point, Call of Duty campaigns started doing absolutely nothing for me, too. Maybe it's the same thing. I didn't get Jeff and Dan's love for the Infinite Warfare campaign at all.

Oh, wait, I have my answer thanks to Steam's current free weekend. WH40K: Dawn of War 3. I avoided that game because of the fan reaction and I can absolutely see that they were right. It attempts to find a middle ground between DoW1 and DoW2, but cuts so much out that made both of those very different games great. It's not complex enough of a traditional base-building RTS to be anything but a waste of your time on that front, but they also gutted the spectacular Company of Heroes inspired squad tactics that made DoW2 so awesome. DoW2 battles were INTENSE and this game just doesn't have it. It also looks kind of worse than DoW2. It's lacking in multiplayer content badly in comparison to DoW1 or DoW2 with their expansions. I honestly don't know what happened with this game.

Easy. I use the internet to speed up the process of completing those games while also doing everything they have to offer. I'm currently catching up on some old RPGs I missed out on last-gen even though at this point in my life, I have less free time than ever before. I'm not wandering around these games, backtracking back and forth while trying to find the "correct" path or solution to a quest. I pretty much have a browser running at all times to look up missions/quests and find the best character builds because I'm not wasting my time with an inefficient "build" either. I look up where special items and such are. This is probably controversial, but I look up the outcomes and choices I can make, so that I don't get stuck deciding and/or angry with an outcome, thinking of reloading a save. This is pretty much mandatory for me with games like Dark Souls. Those games are so vague that they pretty much demand an online community to pool information together. I take advantage of that information and play through those games with no issues because I've essentially cut out the most difficult aspects of them.

This also applies to open world sandbox games. I do pretty much complete everything. Once I get to a certain point in the game, I go on a side-content spree where I'm sprinting to get that "checkbox" of content checked. Honestly, sandbox games are borderline not worth it because at least in an RPG you're exploring the world and leveling your character in the process. Ghost Recon: Wildlands is definitely a game I would consider NOT wasting my time with even with a guide. The sheer amount of low effort copy/paste side-content in that game is unbelievable and using a guide doesn't even help because it's all the same and they're repeated HUNDREDS of times. I actually regret how much of my free time I spent on that game as the story missions wound up being almost exactly the same as the copy/paste side content.

As for multi-player games, I don't really bother with any I'm not already comfortable with. I'm never going to bother with any MOBA's. Even if I didn't hate them, I wouldn't waste my time learning. (Also 30-45 minute matches with 5-10 minute waiting periods between? I'll pass.) I'll stick to what I already know because I know that I'll do well enough and adapt to the game quickly. I gave up on fighting games because the way in which you learn a new game is by memorizing so much about each individual fighter. The moves are mostly the same save for a new mechanic introduced, but you have to memorize the timing of a characters individual animations to pull of combos and counters well and that's just not fun. I hate figuring out the correct timing to perform combos and such. Eventually it becomes muscle memory and you don't even look at your character, but that takes a lot of time... not really enjoying the game very much. When you have limited time, that could mean it takes you multiple days to really get to grips with a new character. That's just one... out of the whole roster.

Abby is awesome. I also like Alex a lot more since East has gotten a lot more wild'n'crazy with the presence of Vinny and Dan in one room. He seemed more reserved beforehand, but I think the hijinks of Vinny and Dan just kind of opens East up for more laid back fun for everyone. Now East is just killing it.

Edit: I just read that Gollum tweet. I don't know what to think anymore... I guess if I can accept Dan's opinions, I have to let this one slide.

World of Warcraft. Do subscriptions count? I don't really pay for microtransactions or DLC and I don't get addicted to loot grinds or cosmetic items, so my whole gaming life has been nothing but the base price of games with possible subscriptions. Behind WoW would be other MMOs like Ultima Online, Tabula Rasa and spending $200 for a lifetime subscription to Champions Online like a ****ing moron... though I feel slightly better knowing Jeff did the exact same thing for Star Trek Online.