I’m amazed he would settle for less than God-Emperor.

It’s true I haven’t played the Elden Ring expansion, and I guess that’s the most difficult one now so it’s required to have played it to be able to parade around your gamer credentials? Whatever that’s supposed to mean? To me gaming is about enjoying a medium of culture, not a dick measuring contest. I’ve played Dark Souls, I’ve played Elden Ring. I’ve beaten Sister Friede, I’ve beaten Malenia.

I still think accessibility options are good.

Accessibility options are good. Not everyone is a god gamer with the reflexes of a 14-year old hopped up on Adderall and Red Bull. Some people just want to enjoy the story and the atmosphere of a game and it should be normal for us to let them.

I mean, I prayed to the nether gods that we’d get a Letho game. He’s the perfect protagonist if they wanted to move away from the books and more firmly into their own OC. Always had huge main character energy, and would be perfectly suited for exploring the morally grey areas of the Witcher world.

I’m still traumatised by getting that reaction from my friends the first time I told them about my diagnosis. A decade and a half later and I still have imposter syndrome about my own diagnosis.

Maybe the doctors were wrong and my friends were right all along? Maybe I’m actually just a worthless, lazy piece of shit?

I haven’t heard about the soft lock, but the game keeps rolling autosaves for quite a while. I can usually go back a couple of hours, so unless it’s one of those things where you don’t realise you’ve been soft locked until way later you should be okay.

I’m with you in general, and I’m typically a patient gamer. However, sometimes you just want to be part of the conversation, even if it means eating a bug or crash or two. I played Elden Ring on release day a couple of years ago and it was an amazing experience to discover the game alongside everyone else back when the wikis weren’t even filled out. I also played BG3 on release and while it was objectively a way worse experience than playing it now would be, it was still worth it to me to be able to participate in the whole world talking about that game for a couple of months proceeding its release.

I have confessed my sins previous weeks so I forgot about adding a disclaimer about the same game this week. You can’t be patient all the time, sometimes it’s fun to participate in the zeitgeist. This game is good enough to merit it, it’s not even a full price game to begin with and they even had a release week sale.

I’ll be back to the regularly scheduled programming soon enough. I have my Mankind Divided playthrough to return to and I have already installed F.E.A.R. as my next game.

I’ve managed to stall starting Act 3 of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for an entire week. I’m in this position I get into sometimes with games where I completely avoid starting the final stretch of the story because I love the game so much that I just don’t want it to end. I’ve probably done every bit of side content at this point, vacuumed every optional area and explored every inch of the map - besides the last one I unlocked that starts Act 3 proper. I’m now grossly overleveled and overpowered for the main story, so much so that I need to work out ways to gimp myself to make the story bosses more impactful.

Anyway, the game is absolutely amazing and you should play it. It will make a very compelling case for Game of the Year, and it is certainly one of the best games I’ve played. I run out of superlatives when talking about this game, from the art direction to the story to the music and the voice acting (in both English and French, both are stellar!) to the combat and gameplay design, every piece that matters hits it out of the park.

Yes, you are some AA-jank every now and then. The lip syncing isn’t great. But you know what? None of it actually matters.

It’s a wonderful, wonderful game.

I’m glad I quit smoking, but I can’t deny I miss smoke breaks.

You get so far as thinking about actually doing it?

This is a great write-up. 8 puzzles me because I don’t think Rian Johnson is a terrible writer or filmmaker. Knives Out was good, albeit maybe a bit smug at times with its own cleverness.

the biggest problem plaguing the STALKER remasters is a strange bug that seems to cause the games to render at a resolution lower than what you set it as and then upscale it improperly, resulting in blurry, muddy visuals that persist even if you turn settings like AMD FSR Super Resolution and depth of field off.

Okay that’s… that’s not great, but should be fixable in a patch surely?

Another highly contentious change that’s drawn the ire of fans is the complete removal of everything Russian or related to the Soviet Union, including all Russian voice acting and localization, the use of Soviet rubles as in-game currency, and even every Soviet sign, statue, and landmark present in the real-world Chernobyl Exclusion Zone that were included in the original titles.

The versimilitude and basis in real world locations was a massive part of what made the originals so great, you can’t just scrub that off. I empathize with them, and I am personally firmly on the side of Ukraine but this sits really poorly with me.

The Zone’s supernatural mysteries are layered over recognizable pieces of Soviet iconography and rusting Soviet technology is a huge part of what gives STALKER its atmospheric vibe, and the absence of beloved voice lines like “Cheeki breeki iv damke!” just feels…wrong

Yeah I’m not touching these abominations. They even removed Cheeki Breeki? The single most recognisable thing in their games, the most prevalent and beloved meme?

There is not.

Both are absolutely excellent, I ended up preferring some voices in French and some in English. For me French feels more immersive, but I grew up in a country that always used subtitles over dubs so I’m used to reading.

I’ve also just always loved french and speak and read a bit of it still so I was always going to go for that in a french game.

Blue Prince is such a masterpiece.

Presumably uBlock Origin.

It’s not finished yet but OpenXray Gunslinger is probably going to be a better STALKER: Call of Pripyat remaster than the official one that just got announced.

God that is the absolute worst.

I can imagine, hah! Good to hear everything is alright, would miss seeing you around 🙂

I’m just at the beginning of Act 3 of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I’ve dragged my feet doing a lot of side content and playing slowly because I sort of don’t want this game to end. For once I wish this was a standard 100-hour JRPG fare and not as relatively short as it is at probably half that.

The game is very good. What else can be said at this point. There are minor niggles and nitpicks and occasionally some AA-ness rears its head but it’s overall one of the best games I’ve ever played so far. The story is amazing, the presentation is beautiful and the turn-based combat with QTEs and parries is super fun. The boss fights are cinematic and challenging in an almost Souls-like fashion. All the characters have distinct play styles and fun synergies.

It’s also an unabashedly French game and I’m really enjoying immersing myself in that to the max by using the French VAs.