ALLTheDinos

Most of my work group has been claiming it’s been post-COVID since April 2020 (I work in the construction field). I’m betting my coworkers skew a little more delusional than most, though.

Two things on this site really help a ton in making the forums a good place: the lack of upvotes/downvotes or likes (which affect conversations negatively for a variety of reasons), and the mods. Thank you all for putting in that work, I would ask myself if I wanted to quit every day I had that position.

@nodima: I remember being quite satisfied with Episode III, though disappointed that they started you off after a spot clearly marked for a 4th or 5th entry in the originally planned 6-game arc. The big asterisk here is I haven’t touched the game since I was 21, so it may very well hold up extremely poorly. However, I definitely think it would be worth playing, in case you ever get the means to do so.

Also, great post! I just got Xenosaga tunnel vision but wanted to mention that.

I’m a sicko, and I thank you for this post.

I don't know about everyone else who's played this game in Early Access, but I've been watching the update feed like a hawk. They finally announced the 1.0 date as "Spring 2022", and confirmed that their goal is to put the game on consoles (though that date is still TBD). I'm posting about it here because a) I'm giddy with anticipation and b) it will also reset your progress, as the last couple major updates have done. If you've been on the fence about the game, I'd highly encourage grabbing it before the price goes up, but waiting until 1.0 to sink a lot of time into it.

I hope someone else enjoys this information, it brightened my entire day.

1. The Pedestrian

2. Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (because I haven’t been able to get the name of this game out of my head since I first heard it and it must be exorcised. Also, 2 weeks for it is fine)

Jurassic Park for the SEGA Genesis for me. I got my Genesis for Christmas in 1993, and I didn’t see the movie it was based on until the next month (although I devoured every piece of media they showed on network television). I was only 7 years old and it took a LOT of cajoling to get my parents to let me see it. Pretty sure I hid under my coat during the T-Rex sequences, so they probably shouldn’t have relented.

Nothing more recent than that jumps out to me, aside from maybe the PS2-era game based on Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers that came out before the movie did.

@nodima: In a nutshell - the roster is absolute garbage (as it deserves to be), but I was playing on variable difficulty for most of the season. That meant early on, my pitching settled into a groove in and around All-Star difficulty, while my hitting (which I suck at) kept going down after some bad games. I'd grind out pitcher's duels, and only simulate a game if I really didn't want to play the Red Sox yet again.

After a couple months, the game drastically overcompensated my roster ratings because they were cleaning up; I had a half dozen players batting over .300 thanks to the low difficulty. All of a sudden, Mancini and Santander were the second coming of Mike Trout, and while I only got slightly better at actually hitting the ball, the game gave my players more of the benefit of the doubt. This also carried over to my backup players, so I finally decided to swing a couple trades. The game deeply underrated Shohei Ohtani after a rough start, so he became my #2 pitcher behind a dominant John Means. I got him for some good prospects and a spare major leaguer I can't remember (to be honest, I couldn't name 25 people who played for the real life O's last season with 100% confidence). I kept trades minimal so I could make sure my roster contained the likes of Chance Sisco and Freddy Galvis. I wanted Chris Davis to be part of the major league roster but the game had him pegged as being totally washed, so it wasn't meant to be. At any rate, this made simulating feasible, which helped get me through some of the 18-19 per team divisional games.

Eventually I set the hitting difficulty to be a static Rookie just to finish the season. I had been playing for months and wanted to just get on with it, try out other modes, etc. I bumped it temporarily in the playoffs but went back down because I fell behind 2-1 in the ALDS. Yes, I'm a coward, but my goal was to WIN with the Orioles, not just make them good. So it's not some feat of high skill so much as it is determination to take a terrible team I've seen succeed for maybe 7 years out of my 30ish I've been aware enough as a person to root for them all the way to the screenshot I shared.

I jumped into it for about half an hour last night on the Series X, and my recommendation is to play this game on PC if you can swing it. The Destiny cursor on the console version can be really annoying at times. I’ll cite specific examples after the 17th but for now, it’s been getting in the way of my fun enough to be noteworthy.

My general impression of the game is that I admire it but wish I liked it more. I’m less than halfway in according to the average time to beat, so perhaps the latter part will change after another night of gameplay.

My top 5, going off the Wikipedia article for “2002 in Video Games”:

1. Ikaruga

2. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

3. Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos

4. Timesplitters 2

5. Neverwinter Nights

Honorable Mentions to: Age of Mythology, Burnout 2: Point of Impact, and Madden NFL 2003