ArbitraryWater

I continue to emphasize that the Amico is the video game console for your extremely Christian neighbors who homeschool their kids. And like, maybe the people who got suckered by the Ouya’s weird appeal to retro simplicity but didn’t learn their lesson.

You do realize that saying the words "Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter" out loud means I'm legally required to at least consider it if I were to do another season of FPS games. I don't even know what that is and it SOUNDS stupid. I think I'm increasingly doubling down on the thing I said after roughly 20 minutes of Red Faction II, which was "boy it sure did take a long time for shooters, especially ones on console, to catch up to the legacies of Half Life and Halo." Just increasingly convinced that I could make an entire wheel of nothing but questionable PS2/Gamecube/Xbox FPSes. Now someone please pay me enough money to purchase a copy of 007 Agent Under Fire (do not do this, it turns out secondhand copies of that game are INCREDIBLY CHEAP. Almost as if they're not valuable.)

You are right that the competition for dubious RPGs (at least not if I keep to my "no indies" rule) is significantly harder in this modern era than shooters, although I also think there's a certain... monotony to a lot of weird, questionable, or obscure shooter design. Necromunda is probably something I should've covered, given how much of a fucking weird eurojank platypus it is (And how genuinely excellent its art direction is) but I think once we get into the Xbox 360 era it's a whole lot of incredibly depressing Call of Duty imitators. Still a non-zero chance of me playing Haze one day though. I'm to understand that it's the shit.

My friend and I will be kickstarting the GB Discord's relay marathon this Friday, Nov 19th, at 9AM PST. Come watch us play Hunted: The Demon's Forge! It's going to be a bad time! I had to set up a thing on Hamachi to make it work! I had to fuck around with IPv6 settings for the video game to recognize our fake LAN connection! It's like Gears of War, but Fantasy and Bad! Lucy Lawless is in it?

I assume the other folks participating will be playing better games, but if you want eight hours of pure unadulterated 2011 video game, why not tune in?

GB Discord's twitch (might also just be hosting on my channel)

Donation Page.

Gonna echo a lot of what people have said here, in regards to both looking at guides and also class choices. It's game over if the main character dies, so it's not a terrible idea to pick a martial class when you're figuring stuff out. No need to mess with dual classing or multi-classing if you don't want to, though I'm personally partial to the Fighter/Mage/Thief triple multiclass disaster.

I also think the first Baldur's Gate is worth a look, not just so you can import your character through the entire saga (including that weird midquel expansion?) but also because BG1 is a fucking great game in its own right. The first couple hours are going to be rough because low-level AD&D is rough, but it'll also help you get a more gradual handle on the game's systems than the starting dungeon in BG 2 allows for.

Baby Daughter Clone

I have once again avoided the temptation to buy Redneck Rampage on sale. Instead you are looking at the proud(?) owner of Unreal 1 and 2, the original Rise of the Triad, and also NecrovisioN for some reason. (that reason? It was 99 cents)

I don't know if I'm going to become the face of Daikatana apologism or what, but in the state I played it in, it's far from the worst game I've played this year.

Oh, okay, so this is the best part: The PC version of Red Faction II only has bot matches. No multiplayer of any kind. Just perfect, A++, era of PC ports being absolute garbage.

I think there is absolutely space for a Wuxia RPG, but I'm also of the opinion that the novelty of Jade Empire's setting doesn't really outweigh its flaws. It has its heart in the right place, but by golly you can tell it was Bioware's first attempt at action combat and by golly it sure does come off like a bunch of white dudes from Edmonton trying to make KOTOR but Kung-Fu.

It's been a little less than a decade since I played it last, but the thing I always remember (other than stun-locking the final boss with Storm Dragon stance) is that it's the first Bioware game that had both a gay romance (with Sky) and also let you have a threesome with Silk Fox and Dawn Star if you toed the line between them. So, you know, progress. Do I remember anything else about those characters? Not particularly.

Always enjoy reading these, btw. I respect any fellow traveler down the dark road of playing random old shit.

The Wheel of Dubious RPGs! Providing a public service for people who have vague memories of playing a weird-ass video game at their friend's house once, 20 years ago.

There *has* to be some sort of oral history about the end of Sierra, right? Because boy there sure is a precipitous drop in that company's fortunes a few years after the Vivendi acquisition happened. Like, the late 90s happen, the Williams cash out and retire, and it's nothing but depression city until the name just gets picked up by Activision and briefly used as a sub-brand (and then that King's Quest reboot happened and you seemed to not like that at all)

...the deep irony being that Quest for Glory V came out the same year and also killed that franchise. Look forward to my eventual Quest for Glory V stream, because that'll probably happen at some point. All I need to do is play through the other four so I can bring my character forward through the entire series. Like a true gamer.

As the dark king of dubious RPGs and obscure nonsense, my pick is either my CRPG standby, The Temple of Elemental Evil (which I've pushed on multiple people in the past) or my new herald and standard for obscure janky bullshit, or Wizards and Warriors (2000). The former is just a fascinating thing as both a ultra-faithful D&D combat sandbox and recreation of an infamous adventure module. The latter is weird, janky, and feels like the lost evolutionary branch of the CRPG genre. It's also maybe the single one of my "maybe not the greatest" CRPG picks.

My non-RPG pick is probably Eador: Genesis or Fantasy General. Ain't no one making video essays about either of those games, at least not in the English language. Eador does the Russian game thing of incorporating a bajillion mechanics from eighteen other fantasy turn-based strategy games, somehow managing to make that stuff work in the process. Fantasy General is the opposite, where it's a streamlined, stripped down fantasy version of Panzer General. It's... kinda great? Has a really good soundtrack, GOG has given it away for free a couple times. Good shit.

Not to call you out specifically, but I feel like a game that sold millions of copies, was tied to one of the most successful media franchises of all time, and more-or-less enshrined its developer in the gaming mainstream is probably not a guilty treasure :P

Personal fave? Sure, absolutely. But I think it'd be pretty easy to find someone to talk about with. Hell, I'd talk about KOTOR with someone at length *right now*

@seventytwotransformations: FWIW I like the Beastmen in actual combat, given how much of their strategy revolves around winning in the initial rush. Malagor’s leadership debuffs make it extra fun when you win with a big stupid rout. But their campaign gameplay is booty, especially since they still have the broken, terrible version of the Waagh mechanic.

I do wonder if Creative Assembly considers a potential Beastmen rework too much of a resource sink versus the attach rate of the DLC. They’re the least played faction by a significant margin, and unlike the Wood Elves their roster is notably incomplete. Still, with WoC getting inevitably reworked as part of this third game I think it would... stick out in a really awkward way if the beasties were left untouched?