Cameron

Maybe they're not random? If everyone gets the same items, then they aren't really loot boxes.

Someone should tell their publisher since they're pricing it like one.

I think it looks interesting, but no pre-release reviews makes me think it's going to be pretty average.

I'm pretty tired of Space Marines. Warhammer 40K has so many cool races it seems silly to make game after game that focuses on the Space Marines. Also, an almost full-price game from developers who have only made some mediocre $15 games in the past is asking a lot.

I think knowing how long a game will last is useful information. Short games should be priced appropriately, and when they're not it's good to know about it. I like short games, but I don't want to pay $60 for one. I don't buy Call of Duty games until they are about $25, because all I play is the campaign. $25 is about what a 6-8 hour shooter campaign is worth to me. However, I don't want the campaigns to be longer, I just want the game to be cheaper, so I wait. I'm happy to pay $15-$20 for a game like Firewatch or Gone Home, because that feels like an acceptable price to me. Those are interesting narrative games that would be worse if they were longer. If Firewatch had cost $60, I would have been disappointed. I think the Captain Toad game on the Wii U is a good example of this. It's a good game, but it felt more like a $20 game, not a $40 game. I understand that the value of money is very subjective, but I don't think most people buying games are fortunate enough to be in a situation where cost doesn't matter. I don't think $/HR is a useful metric on it's own, but combined with what you know about your gaming tastes and financial situation, it can be useful.

It looks good to me. A 1070 is a bit of overkill for 1080p, but that will help in the long-run as games get more demanding. Checks all the other boxes I'd look for. 16GB RAM, SSD, quad-core, IPS display, etc. With the prices of RAM and graphics cards for desktops as high as they are right now, you probably couldn't even do much better building yourself for that price.

I think it depends on what data it's using to make suggestions. If it's what other players have done in similar situations in other games, then I don't think it's a problem. That's basically just a substitute for knowing the meta. If it's looking at what your opponent is doing in your game and making suggestions about how you can get a leg up on them, then it seems like a problem. That would just be cheating.

As someone who has tried to play DOTA 2 several times (years ago) and fallen off because the community is terrible to new players, I think several of those additions sound awesome. The ability and item suggestions, as well as the hero pick suggestions would have made it much easier to get into the game. Still, I wouldn't pay them for features that make the game easier to learn. They should be throwing that at people to try to get new players.

That should work fine. You don't need Gold for multiplayer on PC, so as long as you have Game Pass you should be good to go. When I had Game Pass a few months ago it let me download ReCore on my PC, so that definitely works.

Hopefully everyone who commented month after month on the Playstation Blog (before they stopped posting store updates) is finally happy.

That's not surprising. It wasn't really much of a game or a social platform. I have no idea why they made it or how they planned to monetize it.

@retrometal:

I would absolutely miss achievements. I don't play bad games to get them, but I do enjoy collecting them. I don't care as much about trophies, but I'd still miss them. I find they encourage me to try things in games I otherwise wouldn't, like a playing on a higher difficulty, or getting an alternate ending.

I'm not sure A Link Between Worlds is a great example. That game is, by all accounts, amazing. Achievements or not, that game is worth finishing. I think it would be better to ask if achievements ever made you do something in a game (that you enjoyed) that you otherwise wouldn't have tried. Or, in the case of A Link Between Worlds, is there anything optional and cool that an achievement could have guided players toward? I think well designed achievements can help game developers guide more people toward cool things in their games. Obviously not all achievements do this (shoot 200 guys with a pistol, for example), and not everyone looks at achievements, but they are still a useful tool.

I really like this aspect of them as well. I don't even tend to play the games again, but I like being able to see the games I played and look how long it took me to finish them.