Immunity

Prey is one of my favorite games this year and it will be almost certainly overlooked. None of the crew seemed very interested in it.

It has been an exceptionally good year for games so I suppose it's easy to gloss over some of the less hyped up stuff out there. To anyone remotely interested in the game, I'd highly recommend it, especially if you're into the bioshocks of the world. It's easily in my top 10.

The one where John Drake tells Matt Kessler stories is one of my favorites.

Named mine, CRIME+KIDZ=$.

The thing with games like Diablo and Nioh is that they're just very fun to play. The loot gives you a reason to keep playing and improving your character. You get a cool new sword and it feels good, but the sword isn't why you're playing. It's just that good old feeling of progression that drives players to keep going while they're cutting demons in half or whatever.

That's not to say that there aren't some problems with this style of loot system, but if I'm having fun playing then I'm going to want to keep playing. The loot is just an extra goal to improve my character. And when the loot is VERY good, it makes you feel lucky. And everybody likes to get lucky.

I think this kind of loot system works well for Nioh. In Souls style games, players end up going through the same area multiple times anyway or they deliberately grind for souls. Adding the chance for cool loot just makes that grinding and repetition all the more exciting and worthwhile if you get something good. But if Nioh wasn't fun to play, that loot wouldn't mean anything. No one except for the truly insane would bother to play solely for loot. Of course, clickers are hugely popular so maybe doing something mechanically boring just for the sake of progression seems more normal than I'd like to believe.

If any generous duder has a PC or PS4 code, I'd appreciate it!

Some very interesting stuff in that article. I gave up on the first Banner Saga when I reached a fight that was harder than I wanted, which pretty much ruled out playing 2 unless I went back to 1. As a result, I just wrote off the second one almost immediately. It's cool to see them acknowledge difficulty as damaging to a sequel's sales.

That idea probably only applies to games that rely on their story more than gameplay. That's definitely not a problem with Souls games, for example.

Anyways, I wish them luck with the Kickstarter and the game. It's good that poor sales aren't keeping them from finishing the story, for them and their fans.

@do_the_manta_ray: The thread in the steam forums pertaining to the 60 fps patch is a fucking shit-show as well. Just people bitching that the patch isn't coming fast enough or that it should have had 60 at launch. The devs are fixing it and they're still not happy. The amount of entitlement and flat-out stupidity on display is mind-blowing. Sometimes the consumer is always right and sometimes they're a bunch of raging toddlers undeserving of the hard work developers put into the games they're playing. Bleh. End of rant.

Anyways, if the 60 fps patch happens this weekend I'm going to be tempted to pick this up. Watching the quick look sold me on it. The 30fps lock isn't the end of the world for me, but I do like games running at a framerate closer to 60.

Civilization VI is a lock in for sure, as long as it isn't a total garbage fire at launch. I'll also most likely pick up Battlefield 1 as well as long as reviews are alright. I enjoyed the beta a lot more than I expected to. Not sure how I'll juggle my time between the two since they launch on the same day, but I'll figure it out.

@arabes: I support the investigation since there are some real problems with the way NMS was advertised, intentional or otherwise. But the people who have been harassing Hello Games and Sean Murray are absolutely celebrating and supporting this which is where my conflict lies.

Bad people often enact their plans under the guise of good intentions. I don't think it's hard to see why some people are not backing this up 100%. There's a lot of shitty people that are going to be happy about this because it legitimizes their anger. I'm not saying this shouldn't happen because of that, but it stops me from being wholeheartedly pleased about it.

It's hard to separate this obviously well intentioned investigation from the incessant hate "campaign" against NMS and Sean Murray.

So while it's a good thing that they're seeking to get that misleading trailer off the steam page. I also can't help but feel like this is just that group of people trying to drag Hello Games even further through the mud which it is already firmly embedded in.