Just a heads up, your spoiler is broken (you’re missing the first spoiler keyword).

Man, I love the vehicle handling. It’s far from perfect but I much prefer the weightiness of Cyberpunk (or GTA IV) over more “Hollywood” approach of most games. I realize I’m in a minority on this one but I hope they keep it in the next game (just with extra polish, obviously).

I recently restarterd my playthrough (first time touching the game since 2.0 dropped) so I’m not done with the game yet but my very brief thoughts are: I like the new content and technical improvements, I’m not entirely sold on gameplay changes and have more fun with the old mechanics to some extent (I actually reinstalled the legacy version to compare). There are some things I really appreciate in the latest version but over all legacy is more up my alley.

It’s still a great game and probably will end up as one of my favorites despite all its issues. Will see how I feel after I’m done with it.

I came back to Cyberpunk 2077 recently. First time touching the game since the 2.0 update and I have to say I’m a bit mixed on the changes (I actually reinstalled the legacy version to make sure I’m not just misremembering things).

I’ll probably post a longer write up once I’m done with my playthrough (or at least do more testing and comparison between both version) but for now my main takeaway is this: I like the new content and all the technical improvements, gameplay, while better from a design and balance perspective, lost some of the fun for me in the process. It’s still a great title and I enjoy it quite a bit but yeah… I miss some of the old unbalanced jank of a game we had before.

Rockstar showed their thoughts on IV clearly in GTAV, I don’t think you have to worry about it anymore.

I currently doing a playthrough funnily enough, didn’t realize it was so close to an anniversary.

I’ve been spending more time exploring and doing side activities this time around, just driving around and taking photos. It ended up being quite a surprising experience. I was surprised with how easy the game is, how fast the story moves or how empty some parts of the world are (makes sense considering when it released). Taking the world in a more touristy way was an interesting change compared to how I experienced those games before. It’s also a way of playing I’ve been trying to move towards more and more recently (doing the same with Cyberpunk as well).

I still think it’s a great game but IV and, to lesser extent, Vice City are probably my favorites as far as mainline games are concerned. IV especially as it had a nice grounded approach to gameplay with weighty movement, interactions and driving, as well as the story - it sucks most people hated this as GTAV ended up being a rather mid experience for me.

I only properly played 1, 2 and a bit of Black Flag but based on that and what I’ve seen from all the other games I’m gonna stick with the first one.

Investigations were… well actual investigation, gameplay mechanics while simple and satisfying weren’t overly automated and the game wasn’t burdened with all the bloat that came afterwards. Simplified movement system from later games, one that’s fighting you whenever you try to do something even a little out of game’s comfort zone, is probably my major sticking point with the series.

That said, I’m not sure if that would be the best choice for you. If you want to try the classic approach I’d suggest going with the Ezio trilogy (II, Brotherhood, Revelations) as these games are more polished, if a little bloated, compared to the first game. They should still hold up well enough to have fun.

Ubisoft also announced both The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest will have an offline mode (twitter post, screenshot). Looks like the Stop Killing Games campaign is working.

Speaking of, if you’re in EU make sure to sign the The European Citizens’ Initiative petition - we’re already over 30% required signatures!

I think an important step would be to not be afraid of creating characters with actual… well, character. It was somewhat mentioned in the video but it seems like devs are unwilling to make NPCs with their own likes and dislikes, ones that might disagree with players instead of being all over them no matter what. This might be a slight exaggeration but boy do I wish we had more “real” feeling NPCs in games. I’m sure I’m not the only one who couldn’t care less about being the most important being in the universe and would rather be treated as an equal part of the world.

From a mechanical standpoint, relationship system in Scarlet Hollow feels like a good step into making interactions more natural (here is a detailed look by one of the devs) but I realize it’s a lot of work for something a good chunk of players won’t care about. I understand why this isn’t something many (especially bigger) devs would be interested in using but it’s still a disappointment.

Maybe AI will be able to help somewhat with this problem in the future but I’m not going to hold my breath on that.

I’m sticking to slowly clearing my backlog for now but thanks for the recommendation! So much to play, so little time…

Oh, I didn’t try to imply you did. It’s just I’ve seen a lot of talk about this route being more… rough (on a story rather than quality level), so to speak? If that’s the case I’m just not in a headspace for something like that and would rather play it when I’m in a position to better appreciate what’s there. Maybe I just misunderstood people’s thoughts about it, that’s also a possibility.

Either way I do want to go back to it eventually, if only to spend some more time with both characters (I do find them fun whenever they show up in other routes).

A lot of comments I’ve seen about Shizune’s route suggested it probably wouldn’t be something I’ll enjoy, that’s why I decided to skip it for now. I might give it a shot some day but for now I’m just happy with all the other great stuff in the VN.

Katawa Shoujo is great!

I played it years ago and decided to replay it again a few months back. My initial playthrough was limited to Hanako’s route (got a bad ending which I’m kind of baffled by after the replay) so this time I wanted to try out the other ones as well. Rin’s story ended up being a surprise highlight of the whole process in a way I wasn’t really prepared for (had some very familiar thoughts showing up there). Her whole story just clicked with me and wouldn’t let go until some time after finishing it.

All the other routes were great as well (haven’t touched Shizune/Misha one) and I’m glad I decided to give it another shot for an expanded experience. It was worth it and made me wish for more games with disabled protagonist/characters (without using it as their main characteristic obviously).

I tried playing Bahamut Lagoon, a Japan only SNES TRPG, but had to stop due to some technical issues with the unofficial translation. The little bit I did manage to play (prologue and the first scene after that) was interesting enough so I’ll definitely try again, I just need to get back to my PC so I can research what’s wrong with it.

To keep with the theme I started Jeanne d’Arc, the PSP TRPG, instead. I like the art style, animated cutscenes and gameplay. Not a huge fan of the fantastical elements but they’re not a dealbreaker either. I’m not sure what to think about the story just yet - I like it for the most part but there are some things that make me a bit wary since they might potentially turn into tropes I’m not going to be happy with. It’s a “wait and see” for now since I’m still pretty early on. It’s good so far.

Can’t say I share your experience with either game but I can understand it doesn’t work for everyone. Personally, I can’t really imaging playing this, Kao the Kangaroo or old Tomb Raider titles without tank controls for example.

To be clear, your comment is exactly what I meant - you tried and don’t like it, that’s absolutely fine. There’s plenty of games I couldn’t get into due to controls or mechanics so I feel you. On the other hand, I met people who refuse to even try to engage with certain mechanics and that’s what I’m not a fan of. I’m all for remakes/remasters/rereleases updating things to let more people enjoy the old thing and hope this will be the case with Croc. And hey, even if they change something in a way I don’t like, there’s always* the classic version.

* Though not always an official way to get it.

Ah, I thought people had some specific issues besides the game having tank controls. Fair enough.

I’m not going to begrudge someone for not liking a control scheme (unless their only reason is not wanting to learn how to play differently) but I do think some people dislike it without even giving it a fair shake. The thing is, these games were designed with this control scheme in mind and switching to a modern one can be detrimental to the experience (compare playing REmake with and without tank controls, the latter makes navigation and avoiding enemies much easier).

Oh well, everyone has their own dislikes.

Edit: I read a bit more and apparently the game always had an option to play with some kind of “modern” controls when using a controller with sticks? I’m guessing they’ll probably polish those.

I totally agree. I just don’t have much expectations towards big publishers anymore, I guess. Not many approach the topic of remakes/remasters from the point of view of celebrating their history unfortunately. Heck, we had multiple instances of publishers removing the old versions from sale just to push people to the new one.

Low effort or not, companies (and many players to be honest) rarely care about their legacy.

As much as I like this idea I don’t think many publishers would look at it and said anything other than “yeah, not worth the money”. We probably have a higher chance for the classic versions landing on GoG than being added as a freebie to a remake - they want you to play the new shiny thing, not the old one after all (that and no need to provide support to the old version).

I’ve seen a lot of comments about the controls and I don’t really get it. I’ve played through both games about two years ago, I think, and didn’t have any problems with either of them. Maybe I’m just used to the jank due to playing a lot of older games but I remember both titles playing fine.

I’m curious how they’ll modernize the controls. The little gameplay present in this teaser looks pretty close to the original and I don’t think they talked about this in detail. Whatever they’ll do I just hope it’ll allow people to play and enjoy this little gem. It deserves it.

I feel like that should be the default stance. One thing that gives me hope is the early access release - there’s a chance they’re approaching the game seriously and will use it to make something great.