Ebay yourself a refurbished Steelcase Leap v2 on ebay for sub-400 dollars. I did that when we got stimulus money and it was the best purchase I ever made. Helped get my posture in line, comfortable as heck and you can adjust just about every thing on it.
It's the chads who are critically re-evalutating the Prequels. Those who still hold on to the old hatred are weak and won't survive the winter. Hella flawed and interesting films.
Elden Ring is a textbook example of game bloat, to me. Every time I enter a legacy dungeon I am reminded of how much better this content is by a huge margin. Everything in it is unique and meticulously planned out and placed. Hidden nooks, enemy compositions and placement, fantastic level design all capped with incredible boss battles. They truly are a master of dungeon design over at From but then I enter this drab and uninteresting open world where I run around for 10 hours, looking for the interesting bits which never really show up.
The ruins all look the same, the dungeons all pull from the same resources and end with really boring bosses that aren't all that interesting to fight (and have fought multiple times before) - they're essentially Bloodborne's chalice dungeons but integrated into the game a little bit better. You occasionally come across something neat but I don't think it really justifies the open world at all. The Underground, on the other hand, was what the overworld should have been. It was the right size and density filled with interesting stuff to see and do. Half the stuff is so esoteric that I have to look up a wiki on where to find a NPC I talked to 75 hours ago ended up because they gave me no hint as to where they were going and if they did... it was 75 hours ago.
I love the game. I have a 105 hours (yay/boo unemployment) and not even to the end yet, which is double what I finished Forbidden West at. But yeah, I'd love for developers to trust their players more but Elden Ring is so far in the other direction.
I have to say I wholly disagree with Tam on the "quest" design in Elden Ring. His example with the Onion knight was great because you could decipher all that from what you are shown in the game. In Elden Ring 9 times out of 10 you just stumble upon these characters. They don't go on journeys insomuch that they go to the next area and wait for you. The trouble is they don't even remotely hint at where they are going for you to check in on them. Not even vague directions.
They disappear and it's up to you to find them in very random places. It'd be interesting if they appeared in unique spots that made sense but a lot of the open world places they show up at are the copy and paste ruins. How would you even guess that they were there? The best quests in the game are the ones that give you items and when you look at them they give you an idea of where to look.
His point about the open world was neat, though. I think it's too big and filled with copy and paste things that are detrimental to the experience overall (the game could be half the size and not lose anything, in my opinion) but having a short ride after a boss is pretty nice.
Love the game to bits, don't get me wrong, but its obtuseness can get in the way of things at times.
@allthedinos: For sure! When it does those tracking shots that show off the environment it just got me every single time. While it doesn't have the powerhouse graphics of a few on that list I'd probably still put it at my #2 because it had that perfect synthesis of art direction and fidelity that made it greater than the sum of its parts. A lot of the combat effects are really great too.
To me Forgotten City is the ideal loop game because in each loop you learn more about the world, what's going on and about the people. But not only that, it's structured in a way that you can experience the direct results of your actions. You have clear goals and each completion of that goal seemlessly opens up other clear goals that can be tackled in a fairly open-ended way.
Everyone has a problem that needs to be solved and by having a character go out and help people solves those problems allows you to further interact with them in a completely different way and are able to learn more about them.
Each loop you peel off another layer of the onion and it was super satisfying. The ending landing or not has no barring on it being a timeloop game and I think talking about the overall story and whatnot kind of misses the point of this category. I can have a weak ending but still be the best loop game, you know?
If the alternative to Activision not using all the IP they sit on is industry consolidation then I'll gladly let those IPs sit in limbo. Monopolies suck shit and that point not getting much pushback from the crew is very disappointing.
Who gives a shit about "gAmE pAsS vAlUe" when one company owns most of the industry?
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